Three Years
by Leylia Wolfe
Summary: (Under the ever cliche category of DP/TT) Post UE. Danny is running, three years running. He doesn't want to forget, just to remember, remember forever. Remember his dead friends and family who can never come back. What happens when seeing all the good the Titans do can only remind him of all the evil he fears to become, and when will he break.
1. Chapter 1

**Cardism's Exile **

Three years.

Three long years,

Three of the longest years of his life, and he wasn't even an adult yet.

Three years he'd been running.

Three years he'd been hiding, dreading, hoping.

Three years that defined him.

Three years since everything he'd everything loved had been taken away from him. Taken away from him in some comically originated explosion that logic and legislature said should never have happened.

Three years since his heart had been ripped out.

What presumably edible mixture of ingredients in some hot sauce could possibly become so volatile as to cause that kind of an explosion when overheated, and what possessed anyone to allow such a thing to exist in the back of a public fast food restaurant.

Why did it have to be a fast food restaurant in his town?

Why did his parents have to be such sweet, embarrassing goofs who cared too much? So oblivious and clumsy that he couldn't even find the tiniest iota of teenage resentment to make their absence seem less.

Why did his sister have to be so overprotective and smart that he couldn't just forget about the way she nagged him, and butted in, and risked everything to keep _him_ safe when he was the one out risking his life for her?

Why did his friends have to be so honest and real, that even with their faults he could find no reason to fault them? Why did they have to be so forgiving and so supportive that even when they knew he was nothing more than the seed of evil, they still stood beside him?

Even when he betrayed them, why did they have to be the ones that put him back on his feet again?

Why did everything he knew seem like one big impossibly ridiculous joke? Even the worst tragedy in his life was just waiting to be some washed up comedian's stage fodder in a rundown bar in some backwater, seedy, ghost town…

…Why did he have to think of ghosts?

Ghost in his past, ghosts in his present, ghosts in his future.

Ghosts in his parent's lab, in his sister's library.

Ghosts in his basement, ghosts in his town.

Ghosts in his friend's computers, and ghosts under their school.

Ghosts whispering to them in the dark, and wailing in the light.

The ghosts in the icy breath of his chest, ghosts in his heart.

The skeletons in his closet… even those were ghosts.

The ghost crawling just beneath his skin, oozing in his veins, skittering across his mind. The ghost that wanted out…

He couldn't take it anyone more. Less than a year after the "accident" he left. He couldn't take the whispers and the sympathetic looks. Dash stopped wailing on him, and Paulina looked away in shame. The teacher's were silent; they didn't call him or speak to him after class...

Oh yeah… he'd forgotten, the only teacher that really knew him, Lancer, he was gone too.

Nick Cassavetes' _The Notebook. _How could he have forgotten Mr. Lancer. Maybe one of the people who cared the most was always hidden away behind a screen of professionalism and teenage ignorance, or maybe it was just arrogance.

Arrogance.

_That_, made him think of only one person, one person other than himself.

Vlad Masters, or rather, Vlad Plasmius. The ill-begotten half-ghost billionaire that shared his curse. Danny Fenton's curse.

Half-ghost, half-dead, half-lost.

And Danny's least favorite person. The corrupted, bitter, lonely man who used his ghost powers to scam and thieve his way into fortune and power.

Vlad had been his father's best friend in college, though he likely only hung around the boisterous Jack Fenton to get close to the soon-to-be Maddie Fenton. Naturally, Jack never realized this and when Danny was born, in his usual reckless and spontaneous manner Jack had named the pompous man Danny's official godfather.

A month after they were gone, he found social workers on his heels, packing up his stuff and boarding up his home, trying to ship him off to Wisconsin and the awaiting Vlad's Packer festooned castle.

The memory made him shiver.

Those few days, it was like the future was rushing toward him, forcing him onto the path he feared most.

He had been so afraid, so afraid he would give in, break down, let the pain over come him…

And let the monster out, or rather, let the monster in…

That night before they were due to take him away, he left.

It was his last chance to change his future. His last chance to save the world from himself. The irony he found in it. To save the world from himself, he had to run away.

And he did.

He sealed the ghost portal permanently, programming the lock with a password only he could ever know and then, with a few of his parents' spare ghost grenades, he blasted apart the entire bottom floor of Fenton Works, toppling mountains of concrete and timber down on top of the dimensional rift in his basement.

As the sirens wailed and the patrol cars careened down his street toward the crippled building, he slipped invisibly into the night, leaving Amity Park far behind and for good.

He left the North Star State and headed west. Hitchhiking when he was too tired to fly, or walk when he couldn't catch a ride. When all else failed, he'd phase into the trailer of a moving truck and catch a snooze on some loper's couch.

His goal was to reach the west coast, specifically California, the most populous state in the US. All he had to do was pick a city and then just fade away. Fade into the crowds of empty faces where no one would know the name Danny Phantom, let alone Danny Fenton.

After weeks of traveling, he ended up in a city called Jump. It was perfect. Living was cheap and it was just a short drive, or in his case flight, north of LA. It was large, populous, and completely lacking in human individuality.

Except for one thing.

The local gang of super heroes. Jump City was home to the famous Teen Titans, their massive 'T' shaped watch tower occupied a small island at the center of the city's bay, and the five young heroes routinely patrolled the streets, looking to stop any number or level of various crimes committed in the depths of the darkest streets and narrowest alleyways by Jump's less than savory underbelly.

Lucky for Danny, the Titans were relatively new to the city when he arrived, their tower was still under construction and he remembered seeing the pillar of steel jutting up from the barren rock. Its jagged unfinished top silhouetted against the setting sun.

Normally a team of super snoops would be bad news for someone looking for a place to disappear, but it suited Danny just fine. Who would notice one creepy little boy with creepy little powers in a city rampant with heroes and villains all with their own creepy, freaky little tendencies.

Anything he did would be chalked up to the 'Titans Related' category and forgotten as a one-shot novelty.

Again the irony.

He'd always wanted to be popular, one of the A-listers, the cool kid.

Now, he just wanted to be invisible, and for once, not in the literal sense. Although, he could do that too if he wanted.

Whoever ran this existence of his… be it God, or Karma, or whatever force of nature that mixed together the vat of primordial juices that gave rise to his wasted being… they must have had a thing for irony.

But all of that…

That was three years ago. For three years he'd managed to stay out of sight and out of trouble, he'd managed to be forgotten. If any of his past enemies had made it out into the human world from the Ghost Zone, and if any of them had come looking for him, they never showed themselves. If they had found him, they must have sensed the change in him, and just maybe that monster hiding just under his skin, that want of revenge, that longing, maybe that was enough to keep them away. Either way his life had been quiet.

He lied about his age and got a job moving boxes and crates at a warehouse on the pier. He found a cheap apartment with cardboard for walls and some over-enthusiastic newly-weds for neighbors. It wasn't so bad, as long as he had ear plugs. They may not have stopped the walls from shaking, but they kept the noises at bay.

He thought of this life as a kind of penance anyway. The only reason why he was living was to atone for his past sins, and atone for the sins he was destined to commit if he couldn't stop himself.

He stopped eating meat as a start, ultra recyclo vegetarian, but it wasn't as hard as it sounded.

So every day Danny went looking for things that reminded him of his friends and family, of the life he left behind. Every day, he walked home from his job and took a route that took him past a video and electronics store, he made himself peruse the PDAs and computer games. He made himself pick up the newest sequel to Doomed and stare at the all too familiar graphics and characters.

Then he'd leave and walk into the book store next door. He stare at the dusty tomes piled to the ceiling, read a few pages out of the gothic poetry or wander into the literature and science sections to study the cryptic algorithms and theories he could never seem to wrap his head around.

After that he continues down the street past a local high school. As he passes the gate, the bell rings and the doors are thrown open. Students, not much older than him, come flooding into the blinding sunlight. Students with far brighter futures than his.

He'd get caught up in the rush of teenagers heading for their local hangout, a pizza joint a few blocks away near the center of the city. As they filed through the swinging glass doors and spilled into the previously quiet restaurant, Danny would force himself to keep walking, force himself not to just melt in with the kids who were all so much like him, but he could never again be anything like them.

The memories and the pain would rush into him every day, over and over and over again, until any other person would have broke. But for Danny, it just tore the wound open a new, never letting it heal or giving it a chance to scar. He'd pull up his collar or his hood and let the tears stream down his face, and by the time he was home, they would have dried up and blown away, salt on the wind of a seaside city.

However, the one thing he did that hurt the most, concerned more than nostalgia and poetic justice, and sometimes, he wondered if this particular ritual could be classified as masochism.

Whenever, the Teen Titans were out. Whenever, he was around during one of their numerous heroic acts. Danny would force himself to watch. To just stand on the sidelines and take it in. It was his way of reminding himself that he wasn't that glorious hero anymore, that he had failed, that he was weak and because of him they were all dead.

He thought that maybe, just maybe, remembering that would keep the monster at bay.

But no one's Superman.

No one can take that much emotional pain day in and day out.

No one can rip their heart out and stitch it back in over and over.

Something had to break, but it wasn't anything Danny chose to do himself that would eventually do it. It wasn't his trips to the book store that became the feather that broke the camel's back…

What do you do when suddenly all the names sound the same? When the past haunts you with its bastardized, perverted version of Déjà vu?

When you're walking out of work at the end of an extra shift and you step outside to find a sparkling cruise ship in the bay being boarded by bedazzled high school kids? When a vicious girl named Kitten holds everyone's favorite hero hostage in order to make her troubled beau jealous?

How do you react when you're in a video store and suddenly the electronics come to life as if possessed?

When you're walking home on a dark night and a man on a motorcycle blazes past you, waving a loaded gun and shooting at anything that counts as target practice?

When the guy on the bike aims the gun at a couple on the streets and laughs that no one can tell Johnny Rancid what to do?

What do you do?

You break.

And do something you've tried so long never to do.

* * *

**Author's note: Hiiii I'm Leylia's obnoxious friend who uploaded this... with her consent of course. Anyway, I stumbled on this when I invaded her computer and like the genius I am, I decided to read it. She then laughed at my expense as I slowly died of angst. Anyway, both of us wish for you to enjoy this~ **


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: Just... wow... I mean WOW... I'm utterly astounded that this story has been so well received. Just the reviews are all wonderful and incredibly inspirational. Thank you all so much.**

**To be entirely honest most of this fanfiction is already written and simply needs to be completed. I've addressed a few mistakes already that were pointed out in the reviews, but there was a misunderstanding I would like to correct.**

**I am Leylia Wolfe and I wrote this story. A friend of mine got on to one of my several computers, the one that happen t o have all of my fanfiction. She went through and discovered three years. After spending the next hour dying of feels as she read it, she hacked my fanfiction and posted it. I believe the misconception was that I had discovered my friend's fanfiction and posted it under my account.**

**She's one who wrote the Author's note in the previous chapter, but I am the author of Three Years.**

**Just Out to Hurt**

It was late July.

Normally the city would be bogged down under the sweltering sun. The beaches would be packed with vacationers looking to squeeze the last few sun beams out of their fast ending summer. But an early fall storm moved in and the sky was gloomy. The air was thick and humid, threatening rain. The clouds rumbled and the wind whistled between the steel structures. Very few people were out. They sensed the impending storm and the sun was setting.

Just something in the air... said it was best to stay indoors for the night.

Unfortunately for Danny, he didn't have such luxuries.

It was Saturday night, and he pulled a double shift so he could have Sunday off. That meant that six-to-two became six-to-eight, and even in the summer the sun didn't hang around that long.

As he stepped out the side door of the towering warehouse the wind picked up and funneled in between the buildings, buffeting him with a wet, salty chill.

Tensing against the piercing wind he let out a soft huff. As the wind died again he tugged at his coat, flipping the hood up, and stuffing his hands into his pockets. The first few drops of rain began to fall. He felt several large drops spatter on his hood.

Another gust of wind tugged at the few exposed locks of shaggy black hair.

Danny stopped for a moment and looked up at the boiling sky. The grey storm clouds were stained an orange tint from the city lights below. It looked as though the entire sky was engulfed in a layer of sulfurous smoke.

A few more drops fell, landing on his upturned forehead and sliding down his face. He blinked away the rainwater.

His heart grew heavy as the pregnant clouds, finally free from the oppressive sun, released their burdens.

As the sky began to pour and the wind began to howl, he knew he would take the long way home tonight.

The seventeen year old set off toward the city streets. The docks were always pitch black, but the city was entirely lit by its legion of orange street lights. They stood watch in rows along the streets, bathing the sidewalks in light, but he found no comfort in them. In fact, he preferred those ominous lengths of darkness in between the solitary lights. Sometimes he felt as if he only existed when the light touched him, and maybe when he walked into the shadows one night, they would just swallow him up and end him forever.

That was never the case though. He simply passed right through them, into the awaiting pool of light ahead.

It was really storming now. After just a few blocks his jacket and t-shirt were soaked through, his jeans were heavy and his belt was digging into his hips. With every step his sneakers squelched and water bubbled out from the seams. He felt himself beginning to shiver.

He turned a corner just as a single car sped by. There weren't many out on the streets, most knew it time to be cozied up at home and out of the storm. As for Danny, he was alone on the streets but for a young couple across the road. They were taking shelter on the stoop of a closed flower shop. They noticed him looking and cast him a nervous glance. He hurriedly looked away again.

Just as he started back down the road, his blessed shadows suddenly burned away all around him.

A single headlight appeared far down the road. The light washed out the night, the growing roar of the motorcycle engine was enough to block out the raging storm that rolled across the wroth sky above them.

As the bike grew closer the din grew louder. Above the roaring engine the sound of cackling drifted up the street followed by several ominous pops and a loud whooping. The motorcycle suddenly swerved in Danny's direction, barreling toward him at full speed. Instinct caused the drenched young man to stumble back from the curb. Suddenly the bike swerved again, narrowly missing the curb. There was a bang and something whistled past Danny's head.

His heel caught on a crack on the sidewalk and he fell, hitting the ground hard.

He was stunned, not from fall, but from how close he had just come… the guy on the motorcycle… he had just shot at him, fired a gun, for no reason other than that he was there.

He heard the cackling drifting down the road over the wind of the storm. The motorcycle was coming back for another pass.

"AH HAHAHA! No one can tell Johnny Rancid what to do! NO ONE! HAHAHA!"

Even in the face of danger Danny felt the pang in his heart.

Johnny.

Everything brought memories back from then.

But that Johnny, the one he knew. 13. He never came after anyone one with that motorcycle of his. No one except Danny. Even then the young, unlucky ghost had admitted it was only to blow off steam whenever him and his Kitty had a spat. He only came after Danny because he knew the half-ghost was more than capable of holding his own.

But this Johnny.

Johnny Rancid.

He was murder out with a new toy. He was just out hurt.

He was just out to kill.

Out to take.

Danny felt the anger welling in his heart at the shear disregard for human life. For human bonds and human souls.

His fists tightened at his sides. He pushed himself up off the ground. The motorcycle was coming closer, it swerved again. This time not toward Danny, but the couple under the door way. He saw the rider raising his gun, leveling it at the terror-stricken pair.

They were yards away from the road; Rancid wasn't out to give them a scare like he did Danny. He saw them huddled in that doorway. Cornered like a couple of drenched rabbits.

He was out for blood this time, the opportunity was too perfect to resist.

Danny realized this and the anger became rage. His hand clenched so tightly his knuckles cracked. The motorcycle passed in front of him and in that instant there was a flash of white light and a great roar Danny threw a punch that sent an immense blast of ecto-energy surging through the saturated air and lighting the entire block in its green glow.

The ghostly surge of energy plowed into Johnny Rancid and blew him off his bike, smashing him into the wall of the flower shop, the bike careening end over end and smashing through the window after him. Just a few feet away from the trembling couple. The woman shrieked as the man shielded her from the debris. The two of them ducked out of the doorway and fled down the street.

Danny didn't see them go; he was too blinded by rage. Rancid didn't have time to do much more than groan in pain before Danny flew across the street at sonic speeds, he ripped the tattooed biker out of the rubble and smashed him against the crumbling wall.

"YOU BASTARD!" he roared "Do you have any idea what you were going to do? What you were going to take away? To destroy?"

Rancid stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. His mouth worked soundlessly in disbelief, then the anger and indignation erupted in those soulless, blackened disks.

"Who do you think you're talking to kid? No one tells Johnny Rancid what to do?"

He threw a right hook at Danny, and much to his surprise, his fist fell right through the face of the white haired youth. Danny released him and stepped back. His green eyes were blazing with such intensity they seemed to glow in the night. His face was darkened with disgust.

Rancid stared at his fist in disbelief.

"How…"

Danny raised his hand a green orb of ectoplasm sparked to life above his palm.

With a disgraceful squeak, Rancid stumbled away from the young man. He scrambled and fumbled through the rubble until his hand fell upon a familiar object.

The barrel of the gun came level with Danny's chest, yet the ghost boy failed to even flinch. The orb in his hand grew larger and the eyes of the pathetic man before him grew wider with fear, the barrel shook.

Danny took a step closer.

"Stay back!" Rancid shouted his voice cracking.

Danny ignored him and continued to advance. The gun went off one… two… three times. The bullets fazed through his chest and Danny kept coming.

Rancid was paralyzed with fear, but before he could fire again the gun exploded in his hand. Blow apart from the inside by and expanding ball of green energy.

Johnny howled in pain and terror.

"I-I heard about things like you! Y-you're a ghost! That's not possible! You're dead! JUST STAY BACK!"

Rancid clawed at the rubble until he managed to get on to his feet and stumble away. He ran from the ruined store front, and out into the rain.

Danny was in no hurry to go after Rancid; he would never get away from him on foot, he had him trapped and he was going to pay. Danny was going to make him pay for all of the hurt and pain he'd undoubtedly caused, and for all the more the pain he would have caused not moments earlier. That was, until someone else pulled up on a motorcycle.

This bike was red and boasted an entirely different design from the chopper driven by the notorious Johnny Rancid. Alongside the sporty motorcycle a white decaled sports sedan pulled up. A young women in purple with burnt orange skin alighted on the ground beside the car followed by a green bird that morphed immediately into the likeness of a young green-skinned boy. Finally, in a flurry of shadows a young woman in a blue hooded cloak phased through the asphalt.

The new rider dismounted his bike and removed his helmet, revealing his trade-mark black and white mask.

Robin…

The Teen Titans had finally arrived.

Rancid bee-lined for the young super heroes.

He stumbled into Robin and fell to his knees, clutching the young man's uniform collar and dragging down him into an awkward slouch.

"Help me." He begged "Please t-there's a ghost i-in there, he's after me please d-don't let him hurt me!"

There was a flash of lightening, Rancid howled and released Robin. He covered his head with his hands and huddled on the ground in the dirty puddles of mud, engine oil, and water.

The Teen Titans gaped at the stricken man in astonishment. One of the most dangerous criminals in the city was breaking down in from of them, and wailing about ghosts.

Danny, however, was mentally kicking himself in the proverbial ass for going ghost. Murderer or not, he couldn't afford to let anyone know he was Danny Phantom, or just that he was half-ghost in general. He should have known the Titans would come, now he'd probably set them loose on his own trail. He'd have to lay low if he was going to get out of this with his present life-style intact.

There was a chuffling sound from outside. Instinctively, Danny turned invisible and held his breath. The chuffling was, in fact coming from a green bloodhound, which was nosing its way into the shop through the piles rubble.

Things were getting too close for comfort; it was time for him to make his escape. Remaining invisible, Danny phased right through the green dog and stepped into the night.

He didn't leave immediately, he needed to hang around just long enough to make sure the Titans didn't pick up any ideas that might lead them to the conclusion that a half-ghost hybrid was living in their precious city. He lingered just within earshot.

As Beast Boy sniffed around the rubble he found of number of distinctive smells including Rancid's sent and the scent of oil from the bike, but it was difficult to distinguish anything from the constant smell of flowers the permeated the entire shop, but anything outside the destroyed window was already washed away by the rain. Robin was right when he said their only leads would be whatever they could find uncontaminated inside.

As Beast Boy searched he noticed just one smell he didn't recognize. The scent was definitely strange, he could only describe it as… cold, or at least it made his noose tingle and go numb as he breathed it in. Next, it seemed almost stale; as if it were very old and just a formless reflection of its long since departed originator, but the scent was too strong and too distinct, now that he thought about it, the scent was almost overpowering every other scent in the shop. As if its owner were still... An intense chill suddenly washed over Beast Boy's entire body. His immediate response, was to morph into a penguin and ruffle his feathers in surprise, and as an attempt to warm himself back up again. With his bloodhound senses replaced with that of a bird, he lost the trail instantly.

Realizing his error he once more morphed back into the bloodhound and to his shock, not only were all of the scents different, but the previous trail he'd been following had vanished completely, and that eerie chill was still hanging in the air like discontented spirit.

The now somewhat disgruntled Beast boy turned and trotted back to the other Titans to report what he'd found.

Robin was zip-tying Johnny Rancid's hands with a pair of plastic hand-cuffs when Beast Boy padded up. He morphed back into his quasi-human self and gave and ostentatious shiver while he rubbed his arms vigorously.

"Dude, that was cold!" he exclaimed loudly "I just got the chills for no reason."

"Did you find anything?" Robin asked, ignoring the complaint.

"Yeah just a weird smell, it was strong, but I lost it when it suddenly got so cold."

Robin looked annoyed. He was frustrated with his friend's obvious need to put comfort before an investigation. He opened his mouth to upbraid Beast Boy when Starfire stepped in.

"Robin? Please, we have captured the Johnny Rancid and it is getting late, might we go home now and partake in the Saturday Movie Night we agreed on?"

Robin released the breath meant for Beast Boy and softened instantly; he always managed to cave when Starfire gave him that big green-eyed stare.

"Yeah sure Star, let's get out of here."

Cyborg let out a whoop of joy from the front seat of his car.

"Oh Yeah! And I know just what we're gonna watch."

"Hey man you're not the only one who gets to choose the movie." Beast Boy interjected as he hopped into the front passenger seat.

The two friends continued to argue as Cyborg started the engine. Starfire giggled at their antics and took off into the sky, heading for home.

Robin finished with Rancid and glanced at Raven.

Their enigmatic friend was usually off in her own world, but tonight she seemed particularly detached. Right now she was just staring at a single empty spot on the road. Staring like she was trying desperately to see something that wasn't really there.

"Raven? Are you alright?" he asked

She blinked and looked back at him.

"I'm fine," she replied turning away once more "I just thought I sensed something."

There was a heaviness to that statement, a dead weight that hung in the air like a fume too lethargic to fade away. Like something their just couldn't seem to fade away… Raven spun on her heel abruptly and glided swiftly over to Robin and the still cowering Rancid.

"I'll take Rancid to the precinct." Raven stated in her usual monotone. "I'll meet you at home."

Robin nodded; he donned his helmet and mounted his motorcycle.

"Thanks Raven, be careful, I'll see you at home."

With that his sped off down the lighted street. After a short moment Raven too disappeared in a flurry of shadows, Johnny Rancid in tow.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: I just want to say thank you all again for the fantastic reviews, I'm so happy this is being so well received and I hope you all continue to enjoy it. Please do continue to review it's greatly appreciated.**

**As for updating I realize there was a bit of a break, Monday-Tuesday are 16 hr days for me, I get up at 4:30 and am on my feet until about 8:30 at night with zero free time. but I'll try to get you guys some chapters on my less busy days as you all are waiting so patiently. 3**

**Superfluous Attempts at Classical Villainy**

It was mid-June.

Danny was finally finished with work for the day, and it was Friday.

Movie night.

At least… it was movie night when Sam and Tucker were still around…

Danny started his walk home, a wave of numbness was washing over him, and his heart was seizing up. Taking a deep breath, he took the first few steps towards home. In ten minutes of walking he reached the video store and stepped in. He skipped his usual perusal of the PDA's and computer games and went straight for the movie section, more specifically the cheap action films and scifi horrors he and his friends had always reveled seeing in theaters.

Of course, he wasn't so big on theaters anymore. Something about the wide-open dark rooms surrounded by strangers, and people he never knew. Something about the empty red-cushioned seats beside him and the bag of popcorn he could never finish by himself.

Some things… were just too much.

Even for him…

As he reached the DVD's he found that store was having a sale on _Trinity of Doom_ and its related franchises, including _The Predator's Bride_, _Terminatra_, and a _Nightmare on Maple Street_. He remembered immediately how psyched Sam had been when she first heard they were combining the lead characters of all three movies into one, and he remembered…

He felt the lump forming his throat and put a hand to his chest, right over the spot where the white 'D' would be emblazoned across his chest whenever he became Danny Phantom… A shudder worked its way through his chest and expelled the air from his lungs; he took all four movies to the register.

The clerk was ringing him up, a cute pony-tailed brunette who eyed him when he walked in, she smiled readily when he approached the register.

"Will that be all?" she asked as she put the movies in a plastic bag for him. He was about to nod in response when a loud and ostentatious cry of disgust erupted from behind him. Naturally he turned to see who was making all the noise.

A short, overweight man with long unkempt red hair and costume-like clothing was fuming over the contents of a bulletin board hung on a display near the center of the store. With a far from intimidating and decidedly over dramatic flourish he pulled what looked like a customized remote from inside his costumed overcoat.

Smashing his thumb down on the buttons the remote emitted a flash of bright red-light in Danny's general direction.

As he blinked away the after images left by the intense inferred beam, the cashier behind him suddenly shrieked in terror. Danny spun around to find the young woman several feet in the air with lines of electrical cable snaking its way around her waist and torso. Her eyes were wide and hysterical.

"Look out!" she shrieked

Danny ducked just as a flock of possessed video tapes and DVDs rocketed off the shelves. One of the cases smashed open and the disc inside sliced through air and tore a small hole in his pant leg. Danny flinched but suppressed the urge to use his ghost abilities. Instead, he waited for the wave upon wave of ricocheting merchandise to die down long enough for him to reach over the counter where he knew the switch was for the silent alarm.

There was a lull in the chaos, for just an instant. Danny seized the opportunity and lunged over the counter for the switch underneath. His fingers just brushed it hard enough to flip the molded plastic when something plowed into him, sweeping him away from the counter and throwing him violently into one of the stores many metal shelves. The shelf tipped backwards into the store window, shattering it and coming to rest at an awkward half-fallen angle, Danny laid slumped in front of it, showered in shards of broken glass.

"I saw what you tried there, don't think I didn't hero boy, that character arc is so cliché and predictable." The nasally voice of the overweight man sneered through the fog in Danny's head as he fought through the cotton stuffing his brain after such a violent assault.

His head was pounding and when he put a hand to the back of his skull, he felt a warm sticky sensation, his hand came away red.

Blinking away stars, he looks up toward the register. The surly, under-washed nerd was standing on top of a large, reanimated flat screen, using its power cables to move on its own accord. The television and its new master were bearing down on the entangled cashier.

"Okay. Either you admit that Warp Trek Five, which reunited the entire original cast of the classic TV series, deserves to be on your "Favorite Rentals" list, or..." waving his remote, the man brought to life one of the many fearsome looking cardboard cutout monster displays. The cutout roars at the young terrified woman. She screams.

"Please! I don't even know what Warp Trek is!" she wails as the cutout advances toward her with a threatening glare. The man simply laughs, an overdramatic and hideous cackle of someone far too engrossed in the world of make believe.

"And that, my little tribble," he snickers "Is why you must be destroyed!"

With another exaggerated flourish of his remote and a surprisingly nimble display of movement he leaps from the living television and the screen with its malevolent grin, approaches the girl wielding cables whose frayed ends spark viciously.

Danny struggles to his feet, the ectoplasmic energy sparks to life around his hands and his eyes glow green. It felt like Technus all over again. The living electronics and appliances, the overdramatic demands, and superfluous attempts at classical villainy. More and more reminders of the life he abandoned.

He welcomed the similarities, and relished the pain, but…

His hands clenched into fists.

But somedays…

Somedays… he wished it all would just end.

And then, just like that, with a deafening roar a blast of visible sonic waves smashes into the flat screen, blowing it to pieces. The ectoplasm around Danny's fists vanishes instantly in a wisp of green smoke and he dodges behind the nearest shelf, slicing open his palms and knees on the broken glass as he does so.

The electrical wiring releases the cashier and she crashes to the floor. Not wasting a moment, the girl scrambles behind the candy counter and disappears.

Danny remains with his back pressed against the shelf, his knees are drawn to his chest and his shaggy black hair shields his face. He's in perfect view of the front door as the Titans come pouring in, and they waste no time in engaging the various modes of merchandise now coming to life all around them as the pudgy nerd begins his retaliation.

Danny made for the door. Normally he would force himself to stay and watch, but today he had been moments away from using his ghost powers for the first time in over a year.

He'd seen enough…

Amazingly, his four movies had survived the assault and his shopping bag was resting amongst the debris just beside the door. He snatched the bag up as he limped out of the store, turning his back on the memories pressing in on him.

He walked away from the store front, bloodied and bruised with his clothes torn. The nightmares were nipping at his heels and would return with a vengeance in the night, but for now the voices were whispering in his mind.

He was a failure, the Titans were the world's heroes now, and he was just a washed up freak with a broken dream.

No, worse. A washed up freak with a broken dream, and a murderous villain waiting just under the skin.

A villain whose poison was breaking him…Even now…


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Here's one more chapter for all of you. Once again thank you for reading/favoriting/following my story. I realize the last few chapters have been short and unfortunately with the way the story's been written it's difficult to extend them with out changing the overall affect. I will try to make coming chapters a bit long though.  
**

**And an Entrance She Had**

It was early May.

A cool spring night and the gentle breeze whistled through the rafters about Danny's head inside the dank, mildew infested, warehouse. The smell of salt and fish had long since been stained into the walls and onto the clothing of its workers. Danny himself wreaked of the sickly stench of rotting mackerel and the musty scent of mold.

Tonight was just another night. Albeit Danny's longest night. It was a quarter to eight, and in fifteen minutes the half-departed young man would begin his long walk home.

But for now, he had one more truck to relieve of its crates, the forklift was broken down again, and the dollies were all too small for half the boxes anyway.

Regardless of the inconveniences, Danny walked out to the loading bay to the remaining truck. With a grunt he threw himself against the largest of the crates in its trailer and shoved it towards the ramp.

After much fighting and struggling, and several alarming pops, as his joints protested again the strain, the truck driver mercifully got out to help him. The hulking man's bulk made the job significantly easier and the two of them finished quickly. If still well after eight. Danny fetched the paperwork for the driver to fill out and waited patiently as the man did so.

The driver was beady-eyed and large, and he'd been eying the boy for the vast majority of their time spent in company shifting crates.

"Aren't you a little young?" he remarked gruffly as he scribbled awkwardly on the clipboard, the sleek pen looking decidedly out of place in his massive sausage-like fingers.

"I'm nineteen." He replied simply, but he failed in keeping a defensive edge from his voice. The driver cast him a suspicious glance and gave an inscrutable grunt.

It was an inoffensive sound that could be taken any number of ways, and Danny chose not to take it at all. He stretched out a hand and waited expectantly for the paperwork.

The driver handed back the clipboard, and Danny walked away without another moment's thought.

The clipboard went to the office and he clocked out, the night shift guard clocked in at the same time and the two exchanged haunts as they passed. As always Danny brushed by without thought, without word, without any such courtesy as a nod of the head, or the simple contact of two eyes and two souls.

He allowed no acknowledgement of any of those whom he spent his solitary days with. Not only were most so far removed from his own situation, that association or mutual relation were virtually impossible, but...

Why build bridges you're destined to burn?

Why build bridges that will only allow the past to catch him all the sooner?

Danny stepped out into the clear, salty air, feeling the oppressive weight of the musty warehouse lift from his exhausted muscles, replaced with the guilty cloak of free air and breath that settled about his heart.

Expecting total darkness, as was customary on the poorly lit piers, moon or otherwise. He instead found the dock awash with light, all of which flooded from the silhouette of an opulent cruise ship decked in balloons and strung with lights.

a quarter to nine, the area of the docks around the ship's gangway was steadily filling up with chattering groups of young, elegantly dressed high school students. All of whom were awaiting the start of their senior prom.

The display mesmerized him instantly, and Danny found himself routed to the spot, unable to tear himself away, unable to turn his back and disappear into the night. He felt an old, familiar ache arise in his chest.

And then, he was walking.

He found himself moving without his control, held hostage by his own body as his legs operated on their own terms and they carried him towards the crowd of chattering students, melting in amongst them, but in horridly stark contrast. What with his distressed leather coat and jeans reeking of fish and the damp, he was a pauper in rags amongst nobles decked in their finest raiment.

Several of the teens gave him quizzical looks, unsure of his presence. Several parents gave him dirty looks, disgusted by his attire, sure that he was there party crashing, and technically he was.

But Danny just couldn't stay away.

Every student here was only a year older than he. That meant that exactly one year from now he would have been doing the exact same thing as every other teenager here.

He would have put on a stuffy black tuxedo, combed his unruly hair, and with shivering, sweaty palms, and nerves of shredded tissue paper, driven off to pick up his date for one of the most memorable nights of their lives.

Exactly one year from now all of his graduating class at Casper High would be doing the exact same thing...

Almost everyone...

Who would his date have been? The question skittered across the void of his mind and without hesitation he quashed it. Refused to answer himself.

Too much like ripping his heart out all over again.

Danny choked on the pain in his chest and the smiling faces came flashing across his mind in seizuric droves. The world spun as the smiles turned to horror, twisting and becoming corrupted masses of smoky flesh. His stomach churned and he felt sick. He turned, the motion sent the world reeling, and he stumbled, trying desperately to run away. He would do anything, anything to get away from those faces.

Voices bubbled up around him, most in concern, some in anger or disgust, all at once they pitched into alarm.

Danny only just stopped himself from being subsequently flattened by a terrifyingly pink limousine.

Danny recoiled as the limo came to sudden, tire-screeching halt just inches from his projected route of escape. The vehicular attempt on his life brought him into shocking clarity once more. He stepped back and felt himself shrink under the surprised and concerned gazes of the bystanders. Hands reached out to him, he flinched away like a wounded animal, nervous and distrustful. Blenching from their advances and casting a wild-eyed glaze over their would-be kindness.

But as with humans, those who are damaged are scarcely long in holding attentions. The welfare of another pales in comparison to potential entertainment, and it soon became evident that the limousine hadn't braked so spectacularly just to avoid Danny.

It owner had been planning an entrance, and an entrance she had.

The young woman stepped dramatically from the backseat of her carriage, displaying with pride her sparkling roseate dress, adorned with a white carnation at the bodice. Her smirk at the astonishment of her classmates was the tell-tale sign of her vengeful motive, not belied by the sweetness of her blond hair, secured by a glossy pink head-ban, her large endearing blue eyes, or the slightness of her build.

But after only a brief instant, the girl's sickly-sweet, yet intimidating appearance, soured.

"Where's my Robin?" she growled under her breath, her voice and lips laced with petulance and impatience, the crowd parts just enough to allow her a glimpse of the object of her search. She brightens immediately.

"Yoo-hoo! Robbie-poo! Your Kitten has arrived! Me-ow!" She calls out loudly with a brazen wink. Heads turn, Danny is instantly forgotten, and a void opens around a dark haired boy standing beside a red motorcycle and a stunning orange-skinned girl, whose vehement eyes flash with a poisonous green light.

But this dark-haired boy was unique.

He was, after all, the only person present who was wearing a mask.

And the only person who visibly wilted as the audacious girl caught sight of him and rushed to him with all subtleties forgotten. She seizes his arm in a vice-like grip and swoons terribly. Reflecting the style of an actor performing an elaborate farce.

"Oh, Robin! My date! Robin! Don't you look handsome!"

She hisses something in his ear to which he responds with a flat 'No'. She snarls a threat, and this time is rewarded with a begrudging compliment on the Boy Wonder's behalf.

"Nice dress, Kitten." He grinds out,

"Oh, Robin! You're such a gentleman!" She "Kitten" gushes once more, "Not at all like my worthless ex-boyfriend FANG!" her sweet mask twists and turns horrid for the briefest of instances, and brightening once more into a countenance of the purest honey. By this time all attention has been redirected to the obnoxious girl and her theatrical display.

All the while Danny is stuck to the concrete, wishing desperately that he could just let the Earth swallow him up as it had so many times before whenever he needed a quick getaway, but how could he have missed Robin. Of all people to show up at a senior prom, of all senior proms _he_ could possibly have stumbled upon, it had to be _Robin_ that showed up.

He needed to get away. Get away fast. Not only did he stick out like a neon sign, but to remain here any longer would be unbearable, the very air seemed thick and toxic. It was pressing in on him, the bodies were getting closer, the claustrophobia was building. He was swimming in his own nightmares, the ones where he tries to phase through a wall, but becomes trapped inside. Trapped, unable to scream, or cry for help, no one could hear him past his gag of concrete. No one can save him, no one can help him, and he suffocates, or he's crushed, or he's just left to spend all of eternity fused within a wall until they come to knock it down and shatter him with it. Shatter him into a fantastic explosion of dust and mortar, raining down on a burly assassin armed with a sledgehammer.

He starts getting light-headed, as if at any moment he was going to slip into some wild hallucination of his past.

Hadn't he already?

A girl was claiming her name was Kitten and was clearly using one boy to make her unsuspecting "ex-boyfriend" jealous.

The same as how Kitty tried to use him to make her Johnny 13 jealous…

That was enough. He had to get away, that was all he could take, no more reminders, not tonight, not with the tears coming.

Danny searched for the fastest way out; he tried to slip between the party-goers without drawing attention to himself, but it was impossible, the ships gangway was being lowered and the students were flowing as one great mass towards it, and he was being swept up helplessly like debris born away by the tide.

In frustration he shoved against the mass of bodies until he broke free, but only to put himself directly in the path of Kitten and her captive Robin. She barreled past him, bodily dragging Robin who was flung against Danny in her haste.

The two boys collided, Danny receiving a harsh elbow to the chest, causing him to let out a grunt of pain and to stumble backwards.

"Sorry…" Robin tried to say, but Danny was already bolting. He fled from the crowd without a backwards glance, leaving the Boy wonder to stare after him in shock…

He ran.

He ran until his legs were burning.

He ran until his lungs were screaming.

He ran until his heart was breaking.

He ran until his soul was torn, and he could run no more.

And then...

He flew.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Nice long chapter for you guys, thank you all so much for your reviews and your patience, please do review more, I love it when the reviews are specific, encouraging words are great but please feel free to point out the specific parts that you liked or didn't like. It really does help.**

**On a rather ironic note. I actually ****_tried _****to make this chapter less angsty but... well... I think I might have... not succeeded... **

**Oh well, I tried therefore no one should criticize me.**

**For All the Guilt and Anguish Their Expressions Told**

It was August almost September.

That was three run-ins with Titans in three months. At least two times they had seen his face. One time they had caught his smell, they had sensed his powers, one time they could find his blood, one time they had touched his skin. A million chances for them to track him down.

He got scared. That was a million chances for the past to come after him. He packed up his apartment, ditched his job, covered his tracks. He took off into the streets, and paranoia got the better of him when he skulked past a man hole left oddly askew in a back alley.

He descended into the sewers of Jump city. His shoes sloshed through the soiled water so darkened with filth it looked as though he ceased to exist below the shins. Red sneakers dangling from a power line was an image left on the highway somewhere between Cheyenne and Denver. His work boots felt lead lined in the muck and his feet were frozen solid from the autumn chill whistling along the slimy brick walls.

It wasn't long before the tunnel river opened into a cistern, and the once desolate waterways were suddenly bustling with life beyond half drowned rodents.

The figurative underbelly of Jump was flamboyant as it was dark and as notorious as it was secretive.

But the literal underbelly of Jump was just that… the underbelly, the city under the city. A tent city lit by rust oil barrels set a blaze burning refuse from the streets above that hadn't been soaked in sewage, and if it was, then it was burned anyway.

The larger, nicer sheets of cardboard were reserved for a lean-to, the only home continually at risk of being pilfered whilst the owner slept within.

The middle-class of such a township was characterized by a shelter of plywood newspaper cushions. The filthy rich had the luxury of oxidized roofs of tin and scraps of cloth for bedding.

Danny stuck out with his clothes being only second hand as opposed to third or fourth. His hands were still pale and clean and lacked the stains of dumpster diving, the cracked yellowed fingernails of poor hygiene. The looks he gathered were appraising at best and downright ravenous at their worse.

He needed to disappear, and what better way than becoming one of the tens of nonentities wandering the desolating, rotting halls of the subterranean motel.

Fitting in amounted only to the acquirement of some less… affluent apparel, a rusted shank, and a scrap of cardboard, and Danny found that the various drifters were rather agreeable as long as you pretended their rudimentary possessions didn't exist and occasionally 'misplaced' a scrap of food or two. Anything freely offered was met with sometimes… violent… suspicion.

'It was just temporary'

That was his sacrament, his ten commandments for two weeks.

Two weeks rubbing shoulders with murderers, rapist, thieves, and the general down on their luck. Two weeks of dodging down drainage pipes when walls that shouldn't echo babbled after him, signaling the desperate praying on the despairing.

Day and night had no definition under the ground. You slept when you were tired, ate when you were hungry, but only if there was food to be had.

But food wasn't such a luxury since he was only playing the part of the homeless. He had plenty of money saved up for food at the very least. Staying warm however…

He was cold, he was always cold. Chilled from the inside out. Shivering with the damp as he huddled beside trash fires and unwashed bodies.

A gentle breath frosted his teeth.

The fire was blazing, but his arms were wrapped around him, a chill filled his chest and he was shaken with a wracking cough. Instinctively his hands covered his mouth. That courtesy left over from when he felt real.

Pain from the searing cold shot through his hand. Danny gazed stunned at his blue and slightly blackened fingers.

Frostbitten.

His breath slipped out of him in a chilled breeze, he could see the glittering crystals of eyes turn to steam and drift off with the smoke that slipped along the ceiling and escaped through any number of pipes or storm drain.

A wave of a nausea followed by an intense chill washed over him. His vision blurred, before his had time to even begin to feel alarmed his brain shut down and he slipped into unconsciousness were he sat against the cistern wall between two men

* * *

September 20th

It was night, it was late. The only light in the Tower common room was the harsh glow of the monitor screen partially obscured by the spiky-haired figure bent before it.

Robin heaved a sigh and sat back in his chair. Automatically his hand went to his eyes and he endeavored to rub away the exhaustion and fatigue.

The clock struck 3 am; he'd been at this most of the night.

He'd been cross analyzing the series of minor anomalies appearing in the city the past few months.

Beast Boy had badgered him about that strange smell he'd picked up in the flower shop, and Raven had mentioned more than once that… presence she'd sensed. From their mutual connection he knew it disturbed her… almost in a supernatural sense.

If it bothered Raven then it was something worth checking out.

He started at 6' o clock that night. Three hours in, he caved, and hacked the police database.

Nothing.

Half an hour later and the closest thing to striking gold he came to, was more like piece of rusted scrap metal in the form of an unidentified blood sample on a shard of glass at the video store.

The blood didn't match anyone in the police database or any of the witnesses who had been questioned and processed by the JCSF, Jump City Security Force. In addition the blood was discolored, altered in some way. The preliminary report dubbed the sample contaminated and was awaiting test results.

His eyes flickered to the clock. 3:02:27

:28

:29

:30

Test results that would automatically upload from the testing center in approximate 30 seconds,

29,

28,

27.

He skimmed the report again, racked his brain, and went over it all just one more time.

Three months, three fights, three different villains. Kitten and Killer Moth, Control Freak, Johnny Rancid.

Three different fights.

But there was something. A face, a person, a presence.

It was a big city, and as it's protectors they rarely saw the same face twice. But there was something.

Nagging him.

A pair of sneakers, a pair of eyes… a jacket in the middle of summer…

:57

:58

:59

_"New content available. Open file?"_

_"Yes."_

_"No."_

A door hisses open followed by a loud clang of metal feet and a monstrous yawn.

"Man you still up?"

The face on the edge of Robin's mind vanishes as Cyborg's voice intrudes and shatters the jigsaw he'd just spent the last 9 hours piecing together.

He sighs, and scrubs a hand through his already thoroughly mussed hair.

"I'm almost there."

He was met with a knowing smirk.

"Sure dude, you said that six hours ago."

"That was before I hacked JCSF."

"Whoa, that serious."

"No… just that close."

"_Yes."_ *click*

The file sprang open on the screen. A complex, organized spread sheet of, blood cell content, iron content, blood plasma content, toxicology,… and contaminants.

The blood sample registered an astounding level of radiation, and incredibly high white blood cell count, and diluted red blood cell level.

The sample wasn't contaminated, it was all but destroyed. Thinned by its own plasma and blasted with radiation.

It didn't make any sense; he was back to square one.

"Damn it…"

* * *

The sunrise was breathtaking. The pale yellow orb rising gracefully over the green hills and distant mountains of the southern California chaparrals. Its light gently blanketing the valleys dotted by secluded clusters of private homes and the occasional vineyard.

As the rays stretched west the clusters of homes grew into towns, the shrubs and flowering bushes became stubby trees and the odd vibrant green vine that spilled over the side of a cliff or brick wall, speckled with blossoms of pink or white.

It blazed over a stretched of rocky desert before striking the tops of the palm trees and finally uncovering the streets of the concrete wastelands that stretched all along the coast.

The final structure to be touched by the morning light was the loaming island tower in Jump Bay. Its tallest windows faced west guarded its young occupants from the morning sun so that they might conserve their youth, and beg a few more minutes under the covers in memory of simpler, younger days. Dreams of school buses, and mother's lullabies, and father's arms, lingering cherished just a few seconds longer than the rest of the aging youth in the seaside metropolis.

When they finally stirred, four of five boarders slipped drowsily from their chambers and shuffled, bleary eyed to their common room. Outside the doors they converged from their separate wings, and with sympathetic yawns filed through as the steel pressurized door slid open with a gentle hiss.

The sunlight was struggling to gleam through the westward facing windows. Its beams searched about the sides of the tower for any un-curtained glass or mildly opaque surface that might grant it entrance.

In the mid-morning the light had taken a gentle hold on the common room, warming the last of the five roommates to awaken.

Robin had fallen asleep at the console nestled at the base at the great mural of the ocean now glittering in the sunlight, framed by the grand windows stretching from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Cyborg, though his only human eye was laden with sleep, spotted their sleeping leader and gestured for the others to stay quiet. Beast Boy stifled a potentially disruptive yawn with his fist and let his eyes water as his jaw strained. Starfire brightened at the sight of the sleeping Robin and in a motherly gesture she glided lightly to linen closet and dug out a blanket which she lay gently about Robin's shoulders while he slept.

Even though Robin led the Teen Titans, he was not the oldest, Cyborg and Starfire both beat him in that respect and Raven was close enough in age, but surpassed him in maturity. The only Titan Robin truly outranked in terms of age was Beast Boy.

But if the Teen Titans chose leadership based on age, then the forming of the Titans would have been a moot point to begin with.

But leadership role or no even Robin deserved a few more precious minutes to drift in the land of sweet make believe, before the harshness of life reared its head at the start of just another day.

As quietly as they could Raven, Beast Boy, Starfire, and Cyborg shuffled about the kitchen and dining area of the common room, preparing their breakfast. The smells of cooking were just filling the air and the only sounds were the frantic but gentle hushing of the friends to one another, and the light hiss of batter in a hot pan or the clink of a spoon on a bowl. A peaceful day was taking shape, and it seemed even the dark and the corrupt were to grant the young heroes a brief reprieve.

That was until Robin, mumbling and turning in a dream, brushed the keyboard and life desecrated the screen.

The night before when Robin had been scouring the date bases for anything that might link a series of strange events and inexplicable occurrences.

After hours of searching all he had to go on was a contaminated blood sample. After another or he had a blood sample and a grainy three second clip from a security camera at the video store. A little while after that he had the video clear enough to cross reference with video throughout the JCSF surveillance networks.

Next thing he knew, Robin had a trail of bread crumbs in the form of street cameras and security feeds. Brief images of a young man with shaggy dark hair walking down the street, carrying boxes into a warehouse, or being violently thrown aside as he lunged over the video store counter for the silent alarm.

It was truly the wee hours of the morning when Robin suddenly remembered a distraught and underdressed teen who had bumped into him at the only party he had even not wanted to go to.

The trail led on to a company called Dalv Industries which owned the warehouses the young man had been employed at. Dalv then became the name of the virus which invaded the console whenever Robin came close to uncovering a name.

Then Dalv was the name printed on a letter post marked three years ago and mailed to a one Mrs. Madison Fenton.

Mrs. Madison Fenton led to marriage records and then set of birth certificates.

The birth certificates became Jasmine and Daniel Fenton.

Daniel Fenton.

And the internet exploded.

The stars were just beginning to wink out in the fading blue as the sky turned to blush on the eastern horizon, when Robin finally drifted off to sleep after sifting through countless newspaper articles, police reports and inquiries, amber alerts, and, much to his dismay, a set of obituaries.

The screen lit up and chirped when Robin bumped the keyboard. The crisp tone awoke him from his shallow slumber. He pushed himself up from the console and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. A hand went automatically to his cheek to massage away the imprint sending a tingling sensation across his face.

He squinted at the screen and the fogginess plaguing his half sleeping brain began to lift as he refocused on the most recent file he'd dug up concerning a certain boy, who was a former resident of Amity Park, Minnesota.

A great deal of tireless searching and some his own… "alternate" navigation, was required to dig up what he had. The yearbook pictures confirmed his suspicion that 'Daniel' was the boy he'd run into on the docs the night Kitten and Killer Moth had held the city hostage. Daniel had triggered the silent alarm at the video store when Control Freak attacked, and Robin had a strong suspicion that he was the reason why Johnny Rancid had literally begged for a jail cell.

He sifted through reports about the infamous Fenton family, Amity Park's own resident ghost hunters. Newspaper articles on ghost attacks and anomalies. The "Inviso-Bill Controversy".

And finally, the Nasty Burger Tragedy which claimed the lives of six people and left a fourteen year old Daniel Fenton orphaned and friendless.

The only thing he'd found mentioning Daniel after the local obituaries were missing persons reports as he had seemingly run away from home just a month later. Right before his godfather, apparently the multi-million dollar dairy tycoon, Vlad Masters, could finalize custody of the high school freshman.

And that brought him to the image consuming the mid-morning sunlight that tried in vain to shine through the holographic monitor display that doubled as the central window pane.

The grainy scan of a black and white photograph for a newspaper clipping from a little known town in one of the northern most states in the US, arrested the attention of all five teenage heroes of Titan's Tower who, leaving their breakfasts forgotten, gathered around the console.

A crowd of faces filled the image, all standing against a background in the form of a brick school front. The faces were all the smooth, fresh faces of young high school students with just a sprinkling of the more wizened countenance of the teachers. The general expressions were sad, guilty at best.

At the forefront was a group of five. Four of whom were students. They stood side with a banner held in front.

On either end holding the corners of the oversized sheet of paper, were two tall, strapping young men in lettermen jackets with the CH emblem emblazoned on the right breast. One boy had dark hair with Asian features; the other was blond with a strong jaw and pale eyes. Both had the football player's build and the shoulders of a jock.

But those shoulders were slumped and wounded; their eyes were darkened with guilt and shame.

Between the two boys were two girls. Gorgeous young women ever so carefully put together, with their expensive, designer label clothing, salon cut hair, and meticulously applied make-up. Make up so astutely maintained day in and day out. It was running in stained rivulets down their cheeks as they sobbed silently in frozen despair. The manicured fingernails of the Hispanic girl and her blond companion clung to the banner strung before them.

Both girls had a hand on their shoulder. Hands that belonged to a woman in a dress suit with a professional if motherly air about her own asian features. Hands that held the two girls on their feet more than gave emotional support.

For all the guilt and anguish their expressions told, the banner cried out the most.

Written in bold letters, standing out sharply against the white.

"Danny, please come home."

"We're so sorry."

* * *

When Danny awoke, it was quiet.

Eerily so.

The only noise came from the babbling of the tributaries and the gentle roar of the man-made cistern waterfalls. There wasn't the usual grunting or shuffling of human bodies or the skittering of the odd rat.

Not the rustling of torn cloth. Not even the fires cackled as they flustered the damp and thwarted the darkness.

Danny shifted, stretching his neck for a look around. For his curiosity he discovered a cracking stiffness in his back and his toes and finger were utterly number.

The fire had gone out and the ashes were frozen and dry with cold.

He shifted again and something chilled and unbearably heavy fell against him. With a strangled noise he heaved the slumped body of the old man off of him. The old man he'd been sharing the fire with earlier, seemed to have passed out beside the flames the same as him.

Danny supported him by the shoulders and tried without being too rough, to reposition the wizened beggar against the wall so he wouldn't fall over.

But his numb fingers fumbled and slipped as he moved out from under the old tramp. His hand slipped and shot from the shoulder to the man's bared neck.

Danny almost yelped in shock when his palm met clammy, utterly cold skin.

His hands sprang away automatically, subsequently allowing the man to fall over against him once more, this time his head lolling back ever so slightly, so that his ragged cap tumbled from his balding head.

Of all the ghosts, poltergeists, and demons Danny had faced in his short life…

None could compare with the terror in his heart at the sight of those cold, bleak, glassy eyes. Glazed over with a sticky film dulling the color of the iris that wasn't eaten up by the swollen pupils that gaped like black holes in a freeze frame.

There was frost glittering on the old man's grayed beard and his skin was blue with unnatural cold.

A pit began to form in Danny's chest, a bottomless hole filling rapidly with utter horror.

_Christ, he's…_

Danny scrambled desperately out from under the frozen corpse.

_Oh God he's dead…_

He clambered away and got to his feet. He stumbled.

A few curious glances turned his way as he clutched at the wall in fear of the blue-lipped body.

_I can't have… _

Several eyes were turned on him now, someone shifted, as though to rise.

_It… It wasn't me…_

They knew. They were judging him, accusing him.

_I killed him._

And Danny ran, stumbling drunkenly down the nearest tunnel.

A gentle breath frosted his teeth.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: Hello again, Thank you all again for your favorites and reviews. I'm sorry you only got one chapter last week and this one is a few days late, but it was the week before my spring break and unfortunately that means I go from having little to no homework to horrendous amounts of projects and tests that I have no time for because of my job and responsibilities at home. However it's finally spring break and I can at least attempt to relax even though I still have eight pages of integrals to do...**

**Anyway, I wish I could write you all longer chapters but unfortunately this is the last of my pre-written content. I'm now officially picking up where I left off. SO if I was serious about reviews before I'm doubly serious now. I want to know what you guys like and dislike SPECIFICALLY, and not just events but themes, word choice, plot, etc... deep stuff. That helps me develop my story and gives me ideas. Also if you have any songs or fanart you think would be inspirationaly, please do send it my way it would be greatly appreciated and maybe even reflected later on.**

**But ending this unforgivably long author's note, please enjoy the next chapter.**

**Complaining of a Sudden Unnatural Cold**

His boots splashed in the water just a few inches deep as it rushed around his shoes. The sunlight was glaring before him, his hand followed the wall in his blindness as his blue eyes longed virgined of sunlight re-attuned.

He stumbled from the mouth of the sewer pipe as the water rushed past his heels and poured in a stoic waterfall into the sea. His mind was numbed with terror and denial, a single careless step and the ground never met his shoe. His leg was swallowed by the blinding sunlight and in mindless desperation Danny twisted and grappled with the lip of the tunnel jutting out from the seaside cliff.

The water washed over him as his lay there huddled at the mouth, the weeping jaws of the underbelly, one leg dangling into white nothingness and stale water slipping past. Ebbing around him, thoughtless obstacle, an island in the river, a rock in the stream.

A pebble under the ice…

He started to shiver.

All he could see in the blinding light was frozen black holes and frostbitten skin. Lost in the screaming white out.

All he could see was a dead hobo, a blue skinned corpse with sticky eyes. He was haunting him, this cold. It was a ghost he was haunting him. The icicles hanging above break.

Danny sprang to his feet and glared down the tunnel. All he could see was the dark nothingness. He was in twilight, caught between the sunlight and the gloom. Caught under the ice flow.

He was a hunted man, a wanted man, he was a murderer. His heart was pounding his chest. Burried in an avalanche.

His hands flew to his head and he cried out. Falling into the glacial crevasse.

"IT'S NOT MY FAULT!"

The frozen winds are howling.

Absolute Zero.

* * *

"EEEEEEEEEPPPP!"

The shriek echoed down the corridors of the tower followed by a resounding crash that rang out from the small bathroom and carried past the concrete and steel girders that made the tower tall, and funneled down into the basement garage, causing Cyborg to drop his plasma torch and gouge a horrid scar in the body of his car.

"What the…! AH MAN!"

The scream broke his concentration and Robin stumbled, tripped over his own feet, falling head first into the practice dummy. His bow staff jabbing him in the gut. There was a surprised gasp in the corner followed by a thump.

Robin untangled himself from the straw figure and caught sight of a sour faced Raven picking herself up from the floor, having been jarred from her meditation.

The cry cut through even the screech of tires blaring from the sound system. The game control leapt from Beast Boy's hands and clattered across the floor tiles. The racer spun out of control and careened across the screen to explode in brilliantly rendered graphics.

Four pairs of shoes skidded to a halt outside of the bathroom door.

"Starfire!"

Robin pounded on the door.

"Are you alright?!"

A muffled response drifted through the steel door "Yes! Don't come in please!"

A few moments later the door slid open and a very wet and very bundled Starfire, wrapped in not one but two plush bathrobes, stepped out. Her teeth chattered and her orange skin was flushed. Four expressions shifted from concern to confusion.

"What happened to you?" Cyborg asked as Beast Boy edged around him and peaked past Starfire to get a look into the obscured bathroom. The young alien colored with embarrassment.

"P-please friends," she said between chattering teeth, "Are the b-bathing facilities on Earth always so suddenly c-cold."

They exchanged confused looks. And Beast Boy suddenly let out a yell of surprise.

"Whoa! Dude!"

Starfire stepped aside and the lasts wisps of steam cleared from the bathroom air. The mirror more often blurred with condensation was layered with frost, the shower curtains were stiff and glittering and a great frozen icicle hung from the shower head.

"What the…"

Robin never finished as the blaring tower alarms cut him off mid-sentence. Not staying to ponder the incident further, the four fully clothed Titans rushed back to the tower common room and a reluctant Starfire edged back into the glacial bathroom to retrieve her clothes and dress herself.

They regrouped in front of the view screen that previously displayed Beast Boy's racing game and now sported a digital civic layout of Jump.

Starfire was the last to arrive and hurriedly tossed aside the pair of bathrobes as she glided over the short set of steps and alighted beside Robin who stared intently at the screen and the flashing maze of lines that traced nearly half of the streets and alleyways depicted on the city map.

"What is it?" Raven asked, voicing the customary question they all shared. Robin jabbed the keyboard and pulled up the alarm report and data analysis.

"Looks like Starfire wasn't the only one who got a cold shower," he said and pulled up a few more files, "It looks like the plumbing in half the city is frozen. And not just cold, I mean frozen solid, as in the sewers and cisterns are completely encased in ice and were frozen instantly."

A series of images appeared on the screen. Images of sewer tunnels lined with ice and casting an angelic blue hue across the dark passage ways as the brief light shined in from the surface, of frozen waterfalls cascading from the lip of a frost coated pipe.

"Whoa, what could've done that?" Cyborg was astounded by the efficiency and suddenness at which the ice had appeared, there wasn't a machine he could imagine with the capability of freezing a minimum of ten miles of tunnels under a majorly populated city without also freezing the city above. Not to mention the kind of power such a machine would require. Which meant only one thing.

"Someone with powers did this."

Robin voiced what all of the Titans were thinking. Something super human was in the city, and it was something they hadn't faced before.

* * *

He was falling.

No.

Sliding.

Sliding down a wall of ice, a waterfall that tumbled down the seaside cliff and somersaulted in joyous waves into the ocean, but now the caps of the waves weren't the only white water as Danny plummeted toward the base. For several meters beyond the cliff side and the wondrous ice sculpture, the water was ice-locked.

A massive ice flow grew out from the waterfall and glued itself to the cliff while stretching several feet into the darkening depths, locking unwary sea-life in its sudden frosty grip.

Danny hit the bottom and rocketed out to sea across the white hills of sea ice in the late September California sun. As he slowed the whistling of the wind in his ears died until it fell silent entirely, and he lay their dazed, staring up at the unmoving sky.

A seagull floating lazy on the air currents drifted into his vision. Its beady black eyes trained on him and it let out a shrill cry before wheeling around on the wind and soaring beyond his sight.

_What's happening to me?_

Danny felt a lump forming his throat. His eyes began to burn.

_Why can't I control this? Why can't these goddamn powers just leave me alone?"_

A tear fell.

"Why can't I just be me?"

And lying there on the ice cap he created.

A seventeen year old lost little boy started to cry.

* * *

The sensor in Robin's hand chirped at him rudely for the fifth time that evening. A red set of words flashed across the screen one more.

_Factor of origin unidentified._

For the fifth time that night Robin just frowned, punched in the data, and tried again, but it was getting old. His fingers were numb and his feet were freezing through his boots. They'd been tromping across the ice flow under the main sewage drain on the southwestern section of Jump Bay for the last three hours, looking for any trace of what may have instigated the freezing of the city's drainage system, and so far…

They's found nothing.

Nada.

Zilch.

And on top of that the mayor was getting impatient, wanting already to begin breaking up the ice cap and freeing up the main tunnels. After the first few hours they'd discovered the ice was a tightly packed, super dense, super hard form of glacial ice that only formed as a result of high pressure and intense cold, and was only found in the Arctic and Antarctic. The ice is so dense, it's difficult for heat energy to fully penetrate the ice and begin the process of melting.

In other words, after the entire afternoon had come and gone and evening wore on, all of the pipes were still frozen and the overall mass of the ice under the city streets had only decreased by maybe five percent.

With repairs already needed on the buildings whose pipes had burst as a result of the freeze, the mayor desperately needed to assess the damages to the tunnel ways themselves.

And Robin's in depth investigation was currently in the way of that.

Regardless however, the data had indicated that the main drainage tunnel to Jump Bay had recorded the lowest temperatures at the time of the incident which meant that it was the likely origin of the sudden… cold snap… So far, though, Robin had nothing else to back that up. No chemical abnormalities in the area were present to indicate anything at all, unfortunately, ice does preserve foot prints.

The rest of the titans were in other areas of the city that had bolstered and remote suspicions, none of them had reported anything significant, and all of them were growing weary and disheartened as well as confused.

Any villain would have issued a statement of demand after such an event, and yet there was nothing.

No vengeful phone calls, no broadcastings of ransoms or domination aspirations, not so much as a spiteful letter.

To Robin it was beginning to feel more and more like an accident, albeit a tragic one as many homeless settlements sprang up in the sewers and already some bodies had been found, but there didn't seem to be any malicious intent. Damages were incidental at best and the situation itself was beginning to beg the question.

If one has this much power, why freeze the just the pipes? Why not freeze the entire city?

The only answer was that the perpetrator never meant to freeze anything, but something got out of control. And for the Titans, that meant it was their responsibility to ensure it never got out of control again.

The scanner chirped again, equally as rudely, but now twice as annoying.

_Factor of origin unidentified._

Robin sighed and grew more disheartened. His eyes drifted from the unyielding ice out towards the sea. The waves were calm and the sunset shocked the horizon with orange and fiery blush. His thoughts drifted back to his other investigations and cases, first to his most previous.

The Fenton case.

The image a young pale boy with dark hair and bright blue eyes drifted across his mind, and Robin was instantly somewhere else.

He was standing on a dark city street in the rain with Johnny Rancid screaming of ghosts.

And Beast Boy was complaining of a sudden unnatural cold.

The dirty gas station bathroom provided him with clean clothes and a body washed in sections. He hitched a ride back into the city. Just looking for some normalcy.

_Something_ normal.

None the less he was lounging in the back of a pickup truck as the sun sank in the sky, the city lights erupted in a glare of neon and fluorescents. For once he was glad at how the artificial light washed out the stars and turned the night sky from inky and deep to smoky and dim. He didn't want to see the stars tonight. He was worried he might dream about being among them.

Despite the harsh city glare a few hopeful pinpricks of light sparkled through, Danny blocked them out by shutting his eyes. He let the gentle rhythm of the engine soothe his aching chest as the engine growl subsided to a hum and then escalated into a snarl at the whim of the driver's half attentive foot on the gas petal.

After breaking down on the ice under the sun and the motionless sky, he was despondent now. He was exhausted from the stress and the trauma plaguing him, haunting his steps. So exhausted. So tired, all he wanted was sleep, and somewhere safe with which to rest.

But those eyes were black on his mind and he couldn't get them out of his head. From now on, till the day he really died, he felt that they would be watching him.

Someone always seems to dying around him, and always because he can't seem to control himself.

The pickup began to slowdown again and the turning signal came on. Danny felt his body pulling him sideways as the driver turned and pulled into a parking lot. A brightness burn through his lids and he opened his eyes, protected from the stars by the flashing neon sign that put the last of them out.

The light from the sign hurt at first, but it was a blessing he took without complaint. He didn't bother read the name it displayed, he only saw the word _Inn _and that was enough to guarantee his temporary satisfaction.

He climbed from the bed of the truck, came around to the driver's window. He thanked the man who acknowledged with a dismissive wave. Even so the hard cut man with the softest eyes didn't pull away until young Daniel's hand grasp the handle of the hotel lobby doors and the last glimpse of his boot disappeared beyond the glass.

The motel was cheap, the bed was cheaper, but never had Danny been more relieved to see a thin spring mattress and half stuffed pillows in the entirety of his half-ghost existence. His boots and jacket tumbled to the floor, but nothing else made it off before he collapsed on the bed and fell into unguarded sleep, and drifted into foolishly unwary dreams.


	7. Chapter 7

_Danny climbed out from the backseat of the shiny black sedan, and gazed mournfully at the towering castle looming over him. He sighed as its owner strolled out of the foreboding doorway, stark white hair blinding in the sunlight. Stark white teeth flashing a fake smile that never warmed those frozen blue eyes.  
_

_Before Vlad had a chance to speak Danny turned way and pretended to be distracted by the men roughly unloading his obscene amount of luggage._

_The social worker in the car gave him an encouraging smile and an over enthusiastic thumbs up, which he pointedly ignored. However, he didn't miss the disapproving glance the woman gave to his abundant luggage._

_What did they expect?_

_He wasn't going to leave it behind…_

_After the decision was made for him to be shipped off to his "godfather" Danny had packed the minimum of his belongings and then over the course of three days, he painstakingly packed every single earthly possession of his parents and his sister Jazz. He'd even broken into Sam and Tucker's bedrooms and stolen some of their own personal effects. He had tried to be discreet, since in those households, he wasn't the only one left mourning._

_He'd also stolen several books and various memorabilia from Lancer's library and office._

_He figured "Uncle Vlad" had plenty of rooms, he could have one room for each of them, and then he could visit them every day, it would be like they had never died…_

_At least, that was his preferred delusion._

_But he wouldn't let himself get caught up. After a few minutes of suffering as the workers disrespected his friend's possessions, Danny finally turned back to the awaiting Vlad Masters._

_After all, he had other things to do first._

_Then…_

_They wouldn't be delusions anymore._

**_Flicker_**

_As the black cars pulled up Vlad felt the triumph finally swell within his chest, but the feeling was short lived as he watched the pathetically wasted form of Daniel Fenton climb from the back seat._

_The boy was scrawnier than he'd last seen him and his eyes were bloodshot and puffy. Dark circles underscored and hollowed the sockets. He looked deathly pale. A drowned corpse, bloated from a week's submergence would have seemed more alive than this skeletal husk of boy._

_He watched as Danny seemed to stumble about in a daze, his blue eyes were lost as he watched the men unload his various belongings. The boy was very much a… ghost… of his former self. Vlad caught the tiniest glimmer of something when Danny's eyes settled on him for just a moment,_

_Just an instant, before drifting away once more. Perhaps just a tiny fleeting moment of disbelief or hate still lingered._

_No, triumph was not the badge he would bear. More likely he would summon his mercy. That would seem more fitting perhaps, as now was not the time for… arrogance… The loss of Maddie had wounded him greatly, and he felt that even his cold, villainous heart would soften for this boy who shared both his curse and his pain._

_As the last suitcase was unloaded onto the cobblestones, and the cars sped away, Vlad approached Danny and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder._

_"I cannot tell you how sorry I am my dear boy."_

_Danny's fists clenched and his shoulders trembled beneath Vlad's palm._

_"I didn't come here for your pity." He whispered, his voice cracking from disuse._

_"I came to ask a favor."_

**_Flicker_**

_"I can't take it anymore. All of the pain, I just want it to go away."_

_Vlad tightened the straps around Danny's wrists on the cold steel table._

_"Now Daniel this really isn't the answer…"_

_"I don't care! I want it out of me! I want it gone!"_

_He flipped a switch on the monitor. _

_"There are other ways of dealing with pain than ripping out your soul. Would your mother have wanted…"_

_"He's not my soul! He's my ghost! My mother died because of my ghost! Besides, she wouldn't want a son whose half-ghost…" __The respirator began administering anesthetic._  


_He slipped on the gauntlets, the artificial adaptions of the claws of a ghost capable of tearing rifts in the very fabric of reality._

_And of tearing the ghost out of a human._

_"… As you wish my dear boy…"_

_Will a violent, stomach churning thrust, he stabbed the claws into young Daniel's chest, and ripped his soul from his body._

**_Flicker_**

_No anesthetic can dull the pain of rending one's own soul from the corporeal tether that holds it to the living realm. From tearing one's soul from one's very own wounded body, and for Danny… there was no greater pain._

_The claws slid into his chest like icy knives and then as they hooked into his ghost he felt every molecule of his being tearing in half as Phantom was ripped away._

_He gasped as the pain suddenly vanished. As his ghost came completely detached from him. Then he was only empty, and cold…_

_Horribly, horribly cold._

_He felt thin and weak, as though all his substance had left him, all of his courage, his very pulsating force of life._

_He felt like the lingering wisp of smoke after the candle flame is extinguished._

_Every breath he drew trembled and his lunges felt like lead weights trying to collapse in on themselves. Groping with his right hand, strapped tightly down, he found the panic button just a few centimeters from his fingers. With a hiss the straps popped open, and he slid from the inclined operating table._

_His knees crumpled as his feet hit the floor; his joints may as well have been filled with dust for all the support they gave him._

_There was only one force that sustained his wasted husk of body, and that was hope._

_The first time he failed because he hadn't been strong enough to stop the darkness from taking him._

_But things were different now, he was stronger than him he'd beaten him. He'd already changed the future once; he'd gotten his ghostly wail ten years before…_

_He…_

_He was stronger now, they didn't have to die. He just needed more power. Then he could find Clockwork, and stop all of this from ever happening._

_He just needed more power._

_More…_

**_Flicker_**

_The claws were searing into his very existence, it was all he could do not to scream, the searing heat of the knives and the bear raw nakedness he felt torn away from his human half. He felt like a rotted fruit whose skin had been peeled off, leaving his innards exposed to the blazing sunlight._

_The claws felt like an infection. In desperation he seized the gauntlets and ripped the claws from his chest with a cry of pain. With a violent swing he threw Vald against the laboratory wall and pulled the gauntlets off of the older man's hands in doing so._

_The phantom panted heavily from the exertion. Fear was writhing across the void of his scattered thoughts. The gloves in his hands called for him. A ghostly echo crying for him. He slipped on the gloves, but they felt wrong. When he was done he needed to get back to Danny._

_The separation was sickening, his stomach churned, his entire existence felt wrong, it felt human._

_A cold sweat exploded across his body and the room swam around him. He trembled, but with his last once of coherent determination, the young ghost lunged for the dazed millionaire and impaled him with the claws as they glowed and pulsed a malevolent fuchsia._

_In one fluid motion, he ripped the man in half, splitting his human self from his malignant ghost._

_As the room began to spin, Phantom let the gauntlets slip through his hand then he dove into the unconscious Plasmius._

**_Flicker_**

_He was wrong, he wasn't strong enough._

_The darkness was closing in on him, there were things…_

_Things crawling through the dark, they were coming after him, the faces wouldn't go away._

_There was blood everywhere._

_On the walls, on his hands on, his face. He could taste it in his mouth. He gagged on the thick coppery liquid._

_Then he saw them. First Jazz…_

_But it was just her head… her bodiless head. Her eyes were wide open and her mouth was frozen in gaping horror._

_He stumbled away and tripped over Lancer's arm._

_Phantom cried out and kicked away from the bloodied limb. He looked around wildly._

_Tucker's leg, Sam's limbless torso, his parent's charred skeletons._

_"No, no, no, no, no. Just go away, this isn't… what's going on?"_

_The Jazz's jaw moved._

_"Danny?"_

_Cracks._

_The cracks split across his mind and Phantom screamed as all of the horrors; greed, rage, vengeance, and jealousy, poured into his head and seared into his molecules, as he and Plasmius merged into one single being._

_His hope wasn't enough._

**_Flicker_**

_He was so afraid. He was trembling and shaking uncontrollably as the sheer terror racked his entire body, his lunges screamed as he hyperventilated, forcing the sacks of steel to bend and twist as he sucked in and expelled air._

_His wasted muscles shrieked as he scrambled away from the phantom writhing in agony. He reached the wall and huddled there. His heart was beating out of his chest, as if the muscle itself were trying to burst from his ribs and flee._

_The screaming stopped and the silence in the lab was suffocating._

_Then the laughing came, the cold, emotionless laugh._

_The tears started to run down his face. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed to every god and deity he'd ever learned about in school or on TV._

_Then the shadow fell over him. His heart almost stopped. Slowly he raised his head, and locked eyes with his death._

_The hands shot forward, Danny flinched expecting to feel pain as they stabbed into him, instead he felt the icy cold as they phased into his chest._

_Then his hands turned tangible again… inside of Danny's lunges._

_He gasped as the sudden weights in his chest ripped his fragile lunges to shreds._

_Phantom smiled and pulled Danny to his feet, then with a great heave he smashed his former human self against the wall, causing the weakened boy to emit a straggled cry._

_He felt absolutely giddy when he'd heard the sounds of fear, when he saw Danny trembling in the corner._

_He giggled at first then slowly escalated to a painful, side-splitting fit of laughter as he watched his human-self struggling to breathe._

_As his laughter subsided he pulled his hands back through Danny's chest._

_He held him to the wall with a hand to his throat and smiled again._

_"You wanted the pain to go away." he cooed, Plasmius was showing through "So you wanted to rip your soul out. You moron, if you want the pain to go away you have to rip your heart out!"_

_His hand shot back into Danny's chest cavity, phasing through the sternum and closing around his racing heart._

_His hand turned tangible again._

_Danny screamed. He could feel his heart shuddering inside chest, struggling against the pressure of the hand wrapped around it._

_His heart was going to burst, he was going to die! His heart was going to explode!_

_But with a sickening sound of tearing flesh and bone, his phantom pulled his hand back out with a sickening spray of hot blood._

_Danny screamed until his lunges completely collapsed, but his crippled heart kept beating, refusing to let him die. The blood filled his deflated lungs and Danny was drowning. He choked._

_His own heart was letting him suffer._

_Phantom cackled "That way's just too quick, and using my ghost powers is cheating, isn't it… Daniel."_

_His second hand, stand red with blood, closed around Danny's neck._

_"This way's more fun and you appreciate the classics don't you?"_

_He wrenched Danny from the wall and slammed him to the floor, both hands on his neck. Danny clawed at them, but his weak fingers slipped on his own blood. His feet kicked and his sneakers scuffed the linoleum floor. Phantom's grip steadily increased. His air way closed, he vision blurred._

_Then his windpipe collapsed and he let out a stranggled squeak._

_Phantom's grin grew wider and wider._

_Danny's feet stopped kicking. His hand fell to his side. He held Phantom's wrist with the other as the light slowly faded from his eyes._

**_Crack! _**


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: If it's any consolation to you fantastic wonderful readers and reviewers...**

**The previous chapter made my best friend physically ill when she read it.**

**But once more let me reiterate again how much I appreciate your reviews. Thank you to everyone who is so wonderfully thorough with they're reviews and thank you to those of you who are following this and review multiple times, it really does help. I had a wonderful bout of inspiration during my morning run and cranked this chapter out today and it's still not everything I wanted to write. I didn't have time to go back and edit so please bear with me and ignore the grammar errors and typos. Things are heating up and the next few chapters should be much easier for me to write.**

**The Blade That Put Those Holes There**

"NOOOO!"

Danny bolted straight upright in his bed the covers flying off of him. The blanket caught on the lamp and pulled it down with a crash. Danny leapt from the bed, his ankle rolled and the muscles of his calf knotted up, causing him to stumble and fall against the night stand. The corner of which gouged roughly into the wall, sending up a puff of dry wall dust.

His hands flew first to his neck; his fingers traced the fragile arch of his wind pipe. Then along the nuque, searching desperately for the break in the pristine line of bones. He found nothing, but panting heavily on the floor his hand searched his chest, tearing the collar of his shirt and baring his chest.

Unbroken, unbruised skin, deathly white, but whole. No gaping hole where his still beating heart dangled from a shattered rib cage, amongst the shredded remains of his lungs.

He trembled in the dark room, the only light from the neon street signs that bled through the blinds. Somewhere there was a thump and voices. In an instant of sheer terror, Danny clawed over the bed to the window and ripped down the blinds in a shrieking clatter of plastic and paint chips as he wrenched the holders from the walls.

The dim light from the street lamps of the early hours flooded the room in a diffused glow, gently shooing away the darkness. His eyes searched every corner, every visible crevice of that tiny, gloomy room.

Nothing.

No blood.

No corpses.

No burned, desecrated, or mutilated bodies with screaming eyes.

He was alone. Completely, utterly, blissfully alone.

Danny fell against the wall and released the longest, clearest sigh he had every given. His heavy chest deflated and he slid down wall until he was huddled at the base board with one leg sprawled out in front of him. One arm was propped on the opposing knee, the hand holding his head while his final arm lay limp in his lap.

Sitting in this fashion, he took and a deep breath and slowly ran his hand through his mussed hair. After sometime he tilted his head back and stared up at the window frame. Little dust motes still danced about from the wounds in the drywall.

His arm slid from his knee and the tangled heap of blinds rustled under his palm. He sat unmoving, staring off at nothing, debating whether to stand. Then, before the argument in his mind had fully subsided, his body stood abruptly on its own, settling the dispute with a wave of dizziness.

One the floor, he was pathetic. On his feet he felt even more so. He was slovenly, scrawny, disheveled. His shirt was torn open, his pants were wrinkled, his hair was a matted mess, bed headed and then half torn out by his own discontent fingers.

The room was chilled.

Whether by him or the cool autumn air, it was chilled. It made no difference to him, he was always cold now. The floor was particularly cold, and the bathrooms all bore 'Out of Order' signs thanks to his own handy work.

He pointedly ignored those signs as he had walked to his room some hours before.

But the room was hopeless. The lamp was a shattered mess on the floor with slivers of ceramics jutting from the carpet or hidden in the darkness underfoot. The gash in the paint from the nightstand was rudely superimposed on the otherwise pristine surface, and the blinds were twisted beyond repair, and even then the anchors that held them in place were lost amongst the debris from both the lamp and the shutters themselves.

Danny tallied up the damages in his head. Suffering the cold air on his bare chest and dragging his mind away from the images skittering in the back of his mind. The Nightmare.

Most dreams began to fade after you awake, but some dreams, the wildest, the weirdest, the happiest, the saddest.

The scariest…

Some burn themselves in. They brand themselves in to your head on the back of your eyelids, so every time you close your eyes they're there. Sometimes as a sanctuary, and sometimes as a prison, and those dreams…

They're the ones that _always_ come true.

Danny's hand clenched into a fist and shook with the intensity of his grip. His knuckles turned white, his palms began to bleed.

That familiar fear clutched at his heart, that fear of what lies just beneath the surface. The geyser waiting to erupt, the lightning in the clouds waiting to be unleashed, the hurricane looming over the seawalls; waiting for the moment when the levies break.

Waiting to come surging through.

Laughter rang out in the darkness. Powerful, insane, maniacal laughter. A pair of red eyes flashed over his subconscious. His jaw set and an icy wind hissed from his clenched teeth.

"I… refuse…" his voice passes like a weak breeze tumbling through clumsy tree limbs. It was eaten up of the vastness of the tiny, but empty room.

The way his voice died in the darkness angered him, that's all he was, a weak, tiny little voice swallowed by the still air. Swallowed by the darkness, beaten down and overpowered. He could hear the laughter again, the eyes were mocking him.

"Do… you hear me?" his voice began to rise and the laughter grew louder.

"Do you hear me?!"

It was trying to drown him out, to overpower him again, the eyes were glowing.

"Shut UP!"

The laughter rose to an unbearable volume. Ringing off the walls, piercing through the night, rattling across reality as though it were pounding and wailing at the windowsill.

"I said… I REFUSE!"

Silence.

* * *

"Wait, hold on a sec. You think a seventeen year old runaway with no parents who dropped out of high school, _froze_ the entire city sewer system. A seventeen year old runaway from _Minnesota_ froze the _entire_ city sewer system."

Cyborg looked skeptical at best and sounded skeptical. Sure, it was possible, and it wasn't like they hadn't seen stranger. He himself as well as everyone else in the Teen Titans was testament to that. But the notion that some lost kid had caused this much damage _on accident_ was not only impractical to him, but also horribly tragic and a downright uncomfortable situation.

If it was just another new villain then they could deal with the whole issue faster than well lubed, well tuned sports car could eat up pavement, but a kid… an orphan…

That was a whole 'nother story.

A villain can stand trial for their crimes, and justice prevails, clean, fair, and no messy split ends. But a kid has to be forgiven, and that's so much harder to do. To forgive anyone is hard, but the death toll already stood at thirty-seven and while no life holds more value than another, not all of those bodies were homeless vagrants and street urchins. There were workers and maintenance inspectors as well.

Pain and grief spreads quicker when the dead are defined by society, when a hole is left by them to be filled. Whether that hole be in a job or in a family.

That kid was going have to live with knowing that he was the blade that put those holes there.

But Robin was absolutely sure on this, and that was why they were all standing behind their unspoken leader, staring at a computer screen littered with images of the same pale skinned, hollow cheeked, messy haired, dead eyed teenager.

And for the umpteenth time Robin reaffirmed his opinion.

"Yes, that's exactly what I think happened and I'm sure it was him who did it."

He gestured at the images on the screen again, but before he could go on to reiterate _again_ why everything pointed toward the events of the previous day being just a tragic accident, Raven interposed with her own question.

"By why specifically him? Why Daniel Fenton?"

Robin was quiet for a moment, but when he turned in the chair to face his team there was a heaviness to his face that stilled their skepticism.

"Because we keep running into him."

They all wore variations of the same looks of confusion, Robin spun back around.

"Just let me show you."

He pulled up several files, the first was a video.

"This is from when Control Freak attacked the video store back in June. It's distorted, but you can still see the register when Control Freak attacks. There's a customer being rung up, then…"

The figure in video turns abruptly, as though in response to a disturbance. Though older and taller it was plainly obvious who the figure was in comparison to the photos superimposed beside the video player on the screen.

"But it doesn't just stop there."

The video continues to play, Control Freak appears on the screen the paraphernalia and TV screens are coming to life at his whim. The cashier screams as she's ensnared by extension cables, and Fenton is caught in the middle of all of it, crouching by the register. Suddenly Fenton without warning leaps to his feet and lunges over the register reaching for something before he's violently thrown aside.

Robin glances back at the Titans expectantly, Starfire and Beast Boy are blatantly confused, but Cyborg and Raven are clearly unimpressed.

"So he triggers the silent alarm I still don't…" Robin interrupts Cyborg before he can finish.

"Just keep watching."

The camera angle changes with a few keystrokes, and they have a partially obscured view of the entrance with Fenton crumpled against several toppled shelves and glass from the shattered store front. A few moments later the Titans are witnessing their past selves rocketing through the broken windows and doors with guns blazing. After they past Fenton snatches something from the ground and slips out unnoticed with a heavy limp.

Robin stopped the video and launched into his explanation before Raven or Cyborg could counter again.

"Fenton had the presence of mind to go for the silent alarm, despite the risk to his life and when we showed up he seemed as though he expected us, but at the same time he leaves despite being injured and technically a hero in his own right for thinking to hit the alarm, and this isn't the first time."

The video disappears and he opens a new file with still more images and he begins to scroll through each picture.

"Our fight with Cinderblock. Look."

The image is a downward view of a street, a motion blurred Starfire illuminated with streaks of green is hurtling through the frame and plowing into the back of the unsuspecting concrete giant known as Cinderblock. In the background just barely visible beyond the washout from Starfire's starbolts and glowing eyes is a dark haired, pale faced figure standing in the alleyway.

"Common dude that could be…"

"Plasmus."

And Beast Boy's mouth shuts with a click as the image of a terrified crowd fleeing from Plasmus as he himself represented as a green Pterodactyl is struggling to free himself from the sludge like polymorph. And there amongst the crowd, completely unafraid, if Fenton, frozen mid step with one half in his pocket and his face half turned he looked as though he were caught pulling himself away from a trance. That moment just after you finally tear you eyes from a scene where your body moves away first before your mind fully lets go.

And one picture after another, fight after fight, video after video. If the Titans were in it, Fenton was there. The one calm face in the otherwise animated crowd. A void seems to open around the seventeen year old when the camera captures him. A darkness and a sadness, a regret that makes him so telling from all the rest.

"And that's not all of it." Robin was met with a series of startled looks, they believed him he knew, but there were still a few more things before his theory was undeniable.

"There was a blood sample found at the video store that didn't match anything in the police database, the sample was heavily irradiated and had a very low red blood cell count but a very high blood cell count. They labeled it contaminated, but I'm sure that blood belongs to Fenton and there's a reason why it's like that."

He pulled up the local files from the news broadcasters for Amity Park, Minnesota.

"Amity Park three years ago was famous for its ghost sightings and ghost attacks."

"Whoa Wait! Ghosts, ghosts don't…"

"They exist." Beast Boy again was interrupted, but this time by Raven. Her dark expression was eerie and distant. Beast Boy shivered.

"Nevermind…" he squeaked and Robin continued.

"Anyway ghost attacks. Amity also had its very own ghost vigilante that the local tabloids dubbed Inviso-Bill."

Cyborg suppressed a snicked and received a hard look

"I'm sorry, but _Inviso-Bill_?"

Had Robin's eyes not been covered by a mask he would have been rolling them.

"He apparently didn't like it either, and declared that his name was _Danny_ Phantom. On top of that Daniel _Fenton_ was the son of two local ghost hunters Jack and Maddie Fenton. But here's the thing, after the accident that killed Fenton's friends and family and after he ran away, Danny Phantom along with all the other ghosts in Amity Park, disappeared."

And there was silence. All four Titans were thinking hard on what Robin had said, what it all meant. After a few minutes it was plain what they all thought, what they all realized, but it was Starfire who gave it voice.

"So because Daniel Fenton and Danny Phantom vanished at the same time, it is likely they are the same person."

Robin nodded, but when he looked to the other Titans it was again Cyborg who looked skeptical.

"Hold on Danny Phantom was a… ghost… vigilante with _ghost_… um powers… We're talking about someone who _froze_ half the city, not someone who… I don't know… haunted it."

"We don't anything about people with ghost powers." Robin countered "We don't know exactly what _ghost powers_ even entails, flight, possession, walking through walls. Some kind of ice abilities could be a part of that, and I don't think these abilities were something Fenton had before coming to Jump."

Robin turned back to the console and began typing away at the keyboard.

"I think he got these powers recently, _very_ recently. That's why this happened, why half the city froze, and three dozen people died. He's lost, possibly still grieving, emotionally unstable in all likelihood, and he's got these new powers with no idea how to control them."

He pulled up a map of the city once more, but this map was color-coded and keyed, with specific locations highlighted all across the cityscape, then looked back at his friends and team members with the utmost severity stealing his face.

"Which means we needed to find him yesterday."

All skepticism was gone, Cyborg nodded.

"All right man."

"Let's go."


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: I'm so beyond sorry for the drop off in updates for the last month and leaving you guys and such a cliff hanger. I promise you that there are a number of reasons why I've been unable to update which I will give to you now but first.**

**This story is NOT abandoned I will finish it I just simply haven't had the time and here is why.**

**The first and foremost reason is that I am an avid runner with a rigorous workout routine. To sum it up I run upwards of 7.5 miles a day at ungodly hours of the morning, this isn't a new thing therefore not the exact reason why I haven't been updating. The reason is that in addition to my busy schedule I wasn't resting enough. So the Friday before Easter at the end of my morning run, I suffered a stress fracture in my pelvic girdle. I've been unable to run for the last month as a result. What this means is I have to adapt a new, less time efficient workout schedule that has bitten into what would have been my homework time.**

**Which comes to the next reason, I'm a high school senior, I graduate in less than a month... and I'm taking four Advanced Placement courses, the exams for which begin the week after next. And whatever minimum wage, office monkey moron who designed the AP test schedule and thought it was prudent to make the most difficult exam the First one on the schedule and the easiest exam the LAST one on the schedule deserves to be forced to take all of the AP courses in one year, while applying to Ivy League schools, while working a job, while managing social and familial responsibilities, and then at the end of the year must take all of the tests and pass, get accepted to at least one of the schools, and make X number of dollars at work or something unspeakably horrible will happen to him/her, because THAT is EXACTLY what I've been doing for the last nine months.**

**I can't believe an organization as incompetent as collegeboard is in charge of our nationwide standardized tests.**

**Basically guys my last test is May 14th and until then all of my free time will be devoted to school and work, I promise once summer begins I will begin updating regularly again, and reach the long awaited conclusion of Three Years which by the way is a lame name and I'm open for suggestions to change it.**

**Thank you for your patience and kind words the reviews still make it so much easier for me to really improve this story.**


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: This doesn't justify more than two months of absence, but I did try to add more content than some previous chapters. Please forgive the lapse in writing style, I try to save the more elaborate parts for Danny. Anyway will update again soon. Promise**

* * *

**But You Call Me Smiley**

"Let's go."

Robin nodded and turned back to the console. He hit a key and the system began to wirelessly transmit the data on the map to each of the Titan's communicators.

The communicators chirped in unison to signify receipt of the data.

"Alright you guys have the maps. Starfire you take the section outlined in green, and…" Robin was interrupted when the yellow, round device in his hand emitted a sudden shrill whine. Immediately all five communicators, including the one embedded in Cyborg's arm, were issuing the same ungodly sound. The images on the screens distorted and were overcome with grey static. All at once the noise ceased and the gadgets sparked.

The flash of electricity shocked his hand and Robin dropped his communicator, Starfire let out a soft yipe as her did the same. Raven threw hers always, just as Beast Boy dropped his with a yelp and stuck his thumb in his mouth, nursing the electrical burns.

Fours communicators hit the floor sparking and hissing. Thin wisps of grey electrical smoke issued from the casing along the seams and from behind the screen and then all four devices went dead.

The Titans stared dumbfounded at their fried communicators.

An instant later the computer data corrupted. The files in the system began systematically deleting themselves along with most of the programs, all the while a small red light flashed at the bottom of the screen like a progress bar baring itself with utmost discrete authority. It read simply "Dalv Ind."

And then the phone rang. Five pairs of eyes turned toward the phone next to the console. It continued ring and rang four times before Robin recovered enough from his stupor to pick up the phone and hit the speaker button.

"About blasted time you picked up the phone."

The voice on the other end was tight with a suave northern accent, but laced with irritation.

"Who is this?" Robin demanded.

"Vladimir Masters though I'm astonished you didn't find that out on your own with your incessant snooping."

"Vlad Masters? You mean the _cheese_ billionaire?" Beast Boy blurted out.

"Yes," the voice snapped "But I deal in more products than just cheese. I run half the dairy companies in the continental US I'll have you know."

A look of disgust came over Beast Boy's face.

"What you don't like milk green bean." Cyborg joked playfully and Beast Boy glared at him

"I'm lactose intolerant."

"Oh how wonderful for you," Masters drawled sarcastically "But I called for an entirely different reason than to listen to your distain for my industry from reasons I have no control over."

Beast Boy glared indignantly at the receiver as the voice continued.

"Look _children_, you've been far too deep into matters that do not concern you bu-"

"When half our city freezes over these _matters_ concern us." Robin cut in sharply, a murderous silence flowed over the line. And Vlad Masters voiced returned seething with rage.

"Family matters do Not concern adolescent heroes of some hip-hop, retro-youth city, on the coast of a state full of bleeding heart, liberal college students!"

"I beg your pardon Mr. Cheese Master," Starfire piped up angrily "but you are not Danny Fenton's family, you-"

"ACCORDING to the state constitutions of both Michigan and Minnesota as well as forty-three other states, INCLUDING California _I _am the _only_ family Daniel. Has. Left. And no bumbling bunch of children will keep me from taking my godson home where he belongs. Something I should have done the moment I picked up his trail in Colorado."

"Wait Colorado," Raven broke in cutting off Starfire's brewing objection "Daniel's been in Jump for almost three years, you knew he was here the whole time?"

The sound of a man taking a deep calming breath drifted faintly from the receiver.

"Yes, I knew he was here, how else would it have taken an event of this magnitude for the authorities to finally catch on to his whereabouts. Do you really think a grieving fourteen-year-old now seventeen-year-old boy with hardly the beginnings of a high school level education would have the knowledge, the resources, at the very _least_ the presence of mind to keep himself hidden with an entire city, no, the entire _tri-state area_ looking for him."

"I have been using all of my resources, blacking out news articles, corrupting databases, deleting entire _search engines_ to ensure only I know Daniel's exact location at anytime."

Robin was struck with sudden realization, his head jerked to the console which continued to format essentially the entire hard drive, and still, flashing innocently in the corner…

"Dalv Industries…"

"Precisely, my dear boy."

The five Titans stood in silence, unsure now of just where they stood.

Between a boy their city, or between a Godfather and his Godson.

"Now what I meant to say ear-"

"No, hold on this ain't right!"

"If you knew where Danny was. Why did it take three years for you to come get him."

Having both Cyborg and Raven gang up on him at once had clearly put Vlad Masters off his advantage. As could be discerned from yet another silence over the phone line, but this one was not ominous or angry, it was sad, and clearly the man on the other end had aged and grown old with this simple question.

Why… Why hadn't he come for Danny?

"I… I haven't been the best guardian…"

"I am the only person in this world who can truly understand Daniel and what's more I am an adult, but it took me a full month after… the incident… to realize I needed to lay to my past feelings to rest and take Daniel in as he was. The only person who can understand me as I understand him."

"I left that poor boy alone in his grief and when I finally came to my sense he left, clearly showing he wanted nothing to do with me, even that he feared the very sight of me. At the time it was best to let Daniel go his own way, and to watch over from afar…"

"But I can no longer stand by while that boy tears himself apart and an entire city with him, so I will ask you again to stop meddling in matters that do not concern you."

"And what if Danny doesn't want to come back with you." Robin countered.

"Then I will take him back regardless, he can't control himself and I'm the only person who…"

"What makes you think _you're _the only one who can help him?" Beast Boy interrupted,

"Yes, are we not also capable of understanding him?" Starfire added.

Vlad voice rose in rage and frustration "Leave it to children to jump to conclusions, there is far more involved here than you are aware of, I am coming to take Danny back, and you would do best to stay Out. Of. My. Way."

The line went dead with a violent click as the man on the other line slammed down the receiver.

The silence in the previously noisome room was ill-placed and heavy, Cyborg looked to Robin and he was the one to break it.

"Well what do we do now?"

"We must find Daniel, before that man does." Starfire responded immediately. She looked to others for agreement but was met with silence. Her eyes settle on Robin who was deep in thought.

"We do. Yes?"

"It's not that simple Star. Master's is Danny's guardian and on top of that a billionaire. Legally Daniel is his responsibility and he has the right to take this into his own hands."

"But he does not have right!" Starfire blurted out "He has not been responsible and he has not been a… a… _guardian_ for Danny!"

"Yeah, but he seems genuinely concerned for…"

"Anyone can put on an act like that." Raven interjected, "What he said about making up for his mistakes could mean nothing at all."

"I know." Robin responded "But he said he was the only person who _understood_ Fenton and talked as though he knew exactly what he was going through. It's safe to assume Masters may have similar abilities as Danny and knows how to deal with them."

"Or exploit them."

Robin and Raven locked eyes for a moment and Robin caved.

"Alright, we find Daniel, but we give Masters a chance. If it doesn't look good then… Then we'll take him."

"Um, dudes I think we're all forgetting something." Beast Boy piped up waving his arms in front of their faces "Like how the communicators are all totally fired and the computer is eating itself."

Cyborg slapped at heavy metal arm on Beast Boy's shoulder, making the scrawny boy's knees groan.

"He forgot the communicator in my arm has a secondary firewall I programmed myself." He said with smirk brandishing his left arm with its illuminated display, showing a pristine and highlighted map of the city. "I've still got all of the coordinates at least for the western and southern halves of the city... Just give me one sec…"

After a few quick taps to the screen Cyborg had a full three-dimensional holographic display of the south-westerly portions of the city. The north-eastern half of Jump city was riddled with distorted static and holes in the map. While the Titans knew their city well, Cyborg's firewall hadn't prevented the Dalv virus from wiping out the points Robin had plotted before he had the chance to commit them to memory.

"They're four points on the map for this part of the city." Robin began, taking over for Cyborg "The warehouse on the docks, the video store, a bookstore, and what we assume is Fenton's last known place of residence, an apartment complex we have tapes of him entering and exiting daily. I checked the records and a Daniel Fenton isn't listed, so he probably used an alias. We'll have to split up, Starfire and I will take the docks since it's a larger area, Beast Boy will take the video store, Raven the library, and Cyborg the apartments. If he doesn't show up then maybe we can find some idea as to where he is. Our communicators are dead so we'll meet back at the Tower in two hours."

A quick glance at the four teenagers confirmed their understanding.

"Alright Titans GO!"

The Titans split off from one another as they arrived at their respectable locations, beginning with Robin and Starfire at the docks, to Beast Boy, to Raven, and finally Cyborg was alone as he pulled up to a humble and moderately dilapidated crowding of townhomes and apartments built around a large covered parking area filled with sparkling fifty thousand dollar cars. Trademark of young, inexperienced adults who lived beyond their means or put pleasure before practical finance, living in pathetic rundown hostels, while driving useless and frivolous sports cars to and from offices a short bus ride away and barely capable of getting more than ten miles a gallon in an already congested and smog choked city. All for the sake of ego and reputation.

Cyborg checked the coordinates again on their one and only map, the map pointed to the tall homely apartment on the extreme right of the covered parking. Shutting off his own car, Cyborg stepped out and approached the door. The sun was fading and just a small, glittering orange gem was visible between the buildings as it slipped below the ocean horizon.

The list of residence was almost illegible in the fading light, but his mechanical eye cut the glare and he could make out the names that once would have been illuminated by a dull backlight. Beside the names were the room buzzers and above the entire list the intercom and microphone. Neither looked as though they worked, but Cyborg took a chance anyway and rang the first name on the list, boldly emblazoned at the top. Chu Xiaowen the landlord.

The buzzer rudely echoed beyond the door and after a few moments a heavily accented voice crackled through the intercom.

"Hello? Who is this? I expecting no visit."

"Look ah… Chu? My name is Cyborg I'm with the Teen Titans. I need to ask you a few questions about someone who used to live here."

Abruptly the door swung open and a beaming China man in a holey t-shirt and jeans stood in the doorway.

"My first name no Chu, but you call me Smilely. Teen Titans welcome here anytime."

The man, Smiley, ushered him inside to a dimly lit hallway and through a door to the left into a small ground level apartment just across from the elevator and stairs.

"Tenets have confidentiality agreement but you stay for tea anyway."

"Confidentiality?... Look uh Smiley this kid I'm talking about isn't actually an adult so he can't have confidentiality or even rent an apartment and I can't…"

Before Cyborg could finish the Chinese landlord had shoved through the doorway and sat him on cushions at a low table. He quickly produced a kettle and several matching chipped cups. The tea must have been on the burner when Cyborg rang because it still searing hot to the touch.

"Sit sit sit drink, Mr. Cyborg. Then we talk, drink."

Cyborg sighed but took a sip.

Smiley had certainly earned his name. His weathered old face was perpetually turned up in a cheerful grin. His eyes were crinkled together in eternal amusement so that on the smallest gleam off black could be seen between his wrinkles. He was spry for his age and quick. Bustling about the tiny apartment and deftly maneuvering his increasingly more cleverly stored stuff. From the pots and woks hanging from the ceiling to the bamboo rice steamer that doubled at a lamp shade and the floor mat he used as both a bed and his curtains.

The tea pot, however, served one purpose, and that was to serve tea, and it proudly held it place centered in the cabinet where it was most easily accessible so that Smiley might entertain his most sacred of hobbies and rituals.

His evening tea.

And that particular evening, he shared this ritual with his guest.

The metal man of the Teen Titains, Mr. Cyborg.

"You good children." Smiley was saying as he scurried about his cluttered home "You rescue good people and beat bad men. Help you in any way possible, but I can't a violate confidentiality agreement. Then Smiley get in big trouble and Teen Titans have to beat me." He laughed and offered Cyborg and platter of wafers.

"Uh no thanks man I'm full… but look, the person I'm asking about is just a kid… like us… uh the Titans, he doesn't have confidentiality."

Smiley looked confused "No confidentiality? but he say he eighteen, that adult."

"Well you see he lied he's actually only… Wait you know who I'm talking about?"

Smiley grinned "No kids here at Smiley's apartment alone, but one boy come here year ago, say he was eighteen and got apartment. He good boy, always work hard and go to work every day, never stay home sick. And he always pay rent on time." Smiley nodded to himself "Good boy."

Cyborg jumped to his feet nearly knocking over the tea, Smiley yipped loudly and dove to save his precious tea cups.

"Aiya! Careful Mr. Cyborg!"

"Oops sorry, my bad… but what did the kid look like, what was his name?"

The small old man gave him a shrewd look, something that seemed out of place and the faced lined with laugh lines and light.

"He skinny tall boy, with a black hair, blue eye. He say his name Jack Tucker."

Cyborg looked away for a moment and busied himself with the communicator embedded in his arm, after a few moments he pulled up an image on the hallow-graphic display.

"Is this him?"

Smiley squinted at the image and nodded.

"He older, but that him, that Jack."


	11. Chapter 11

**AN: I'm sorry for the wait. I was out of town and before that I had computer issues with my new laptop and that's not including the lack of inspiration as my muse has abadon me the last few months but I managed and incredible bought of inspiration this morning so please forgive any errors you many notice. Also if anyone reviews could you please include either a 1 or a 2 after your review i know that makes no sense but trust me it may be vital to the ending of the story.**

**But Above All, There Was Determination**

The pier was always dark. The city street lights couldn't reach beyond the windowless, shadowed buildings crowded by the sea. Any light seemed to be swallowed up as it stumbled its way across the road and spilled over the sea wall. The darkness was broken only in pools, gathered around the exterior doors in shades of red, garish orange, or dull yellow. The occasional LED cut through the black like a knife. A white gap with a sheer edge, asserting itself in the night making the surrounding shadows seem deeper, formidable, and tangible.

Starfire alighted on the concrete pier. Even with the darkness, she felt a familiarity. The setting was foreign without the sparkling lights and the cruise ship, its reflection glimmering across a smooth, glassy surface, provided by the harbor-sheltered bay.

But she remembered.

"Robin, this is…"

"Yeah I remember." Robin stepped up beside her. Having left his motorcycle parked on the sidewalk. He braved the darkness on foot following Starfire's gentle green glow.

They faced the sea and looked out, Titan's Tower was a black silhouette against a blacker sky, and all the lights, even the stars, were out.

To their right was one solitary lamp. Hanging above a thin rusted door with a severe rectangular window.

"That's the one." Robin said as he turned to it, "He was right here the whole time. Perfect view of the Tower, right there when I was stuck with Kitten and Killer Moth was trying to take over the city."

Robin fell silent, and after several minutes Starfire began to grow antsy.

"Robin?"

"I think I met him." His head jerked up to look at Starfire. "I think he ran into me, that night, Remember?"

Starfire blinked, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't remember, her mind had been clouded that night and her emotions had raged.

Robin shook his head "He was right there."

"Just right there."

The helicopter blades thumped relentlessly overhead. They powered through the night sky and obliterated the quiet air. The instruments cast and eerie glow, but none surpassed the eerie pallor of the snowy-haired gentleman riding in the copilot's seat.

He was pale and cut from a devilish mold. His suit was crisp, severe, and pristine. Freshly pressed and starched. His hair was equally severe, oiled, gelled and neatly combed; it was tightly restrained in a sensibly trimmed ponytail. Additionally he maintained a neatly groomed goatee which accented a defined and chiseled chin.

He was a man of definition and of later years, a man of impregnable silence and merciless wit.

He exuded an ever present air of cold anger and mild hate. Toward whom it was unknown, but his enemies did not wager to chance that it was not meant for them. The multi-billion dollar CEO held sway over the largest organizations in the United States, he all but owned the bureaucracy.

His mere whim could threaten their very existence.

And yet the whispers came none the less, Vlad Masters was changed.

For who could fear a dreary castle in Wisconsin, when its walls and towers were haunted by a single, sad old man…

After the decidedly ineffective conversation with the Titan's, Masters' private jet had landed on an airstrip inland from the coast and it still another hours flight to this fledgling city known as Jump.

And so there he was, with the helicopter's blades chopping relentlessly through the air, powering on to the sea.

He sat in the copilot's seat lost deep in thought. He could see nothing in the darkness beyond the glow of the instrument and the tinted glass.

But when the forest of lights blossomed as they passed over a hill and the sea glittered faintly in the moonlight, the lonely old man sat forward in his seat.

_"__I let you go once Daniel. I won't make that same mistake again."_

It was cold.

Everything was cold.

Darkness had turned to dawn and dawn gave way to the sun. The autumn day had come and gone and still, he was cold. Night had descended. He had left it far behind.

The broken blinds, the trashed hotel room, the "Out of Order" signs.

But he was cold.

And the voice was coming.

He was laughing at him out of the alleyways and leering through the dead glacial eyes trapped under the frozen manhole covers.

His cackling was in the chattering of neglected a car engine driving past on wobbly legs. His wailing echoes across the night sky as the jet planes roared overhead. His voice is in everything. His eyes are everywhere.

And Danny stumbles down the sidewalk, angry pedestrians hurrying home for the night shoot him angry looks as he brushes by, stumbles past, trods over, and bumps into them.

The shout for him to take his issues into a dark alley, so they might not be subject to his drunkenness, or to get himself home and stay there until he's decent.

But there's no home for him to go to, and there are no toxins polluting his blood, he is drunk on fear and the night keeps him running.

_"__You can't run and you can't hide boy."_

_"__You couldn't save them and you can't save yourself."_

_"__I'm apart of you and you will become me."_

"You're not me; I'm not you so just SHUT UP!"

Danny screamed his frustration and fell to his knees. His hands gripped his head and he fought the tears that threatened to fall from his eyes.

Several bystanders stopped in their tracks. The paused to stare at him and whispers passed between them. Several went wide as they skirted around him, following the edge of the building or stepping off of the curve. Their natural hesitation and immediate fear, as though they were afraid they might catch the madness from him, or else be caught in his sudden wild need to lash out.

But his eyes were squeezed, and he was trying desperately to shake the voice from his head. The evil, laughing, taunting voice. It was him; it was him laughing at himself, at weakness, at his loathing, at his confusion.

_"__You're not sad that you let your family die, you're not angry at me for killing them, you sad and angry at yourself because you know you're the one who killed them. You murdered them all the same, and you'll do it again. Over and over, whether in this dimension or in the next one after that, in an infinite cycle, because you always become me and I make sure you always do."_

He roared will laughter and those red eyes blazed brighter than ever before, until everything was bathed in red.

"JUST SHUT UP!"

There were tears streaming down his face. The laughter was impossibly loud, it echoed off the buildings, and the parked cars, and the street light, and bounced off the walls of his skull, and spiraled inside his head in a whirlwind that never died. It was deafening and silencing and drowned out everything eyes, even the aircraft that flew overhead and it never ended and never stopped and…

"Danny?"

Silence.

His eyes flew open.

Sam?

"Hey, finally found you man."

Tucker?

"Are you alright Danny?"

Jazz?

"Danny?"

"NO!" he screamed "You're not real, just stay away!"

He scrambled to his feet and dove away as they reached out for him, stumbling into the street."

"Danny wait! LOOK OUT!"

Headlights, and screeching tires. He threw his hands up as the double lamps blinding him. The startled bystanders screamed and looked away, waiting for the sickening crunch, instead there was a flash of brilliant white light, and chilled wind blew past them.

The horn from the car bellowed and then skid to a stop some distance down the road. The engine was frozen and the tires were iced. The driver stumbled out.

White as a ghost.

And there was Danny, unharmed in the road on his knees, he looked at his hands and they were gloved in white, his body was clothed in black. A long white cloak and hood over his head, the soft white light kept the darkness at bay. The laughter, and the smile, and the glowing red eyes.

For the first time he felt safe, for the first time again he felt warm.

He looked back at the gathering crowd. Standing at the front…

It wasn't Sam, it wasn't Tucker, and It wasn't Jazz.

It was a grey-skinned girl cloaked in blue. It was a green-skinned boy struck with awe. And it was an orange-haired girl with her hands over her mouth in a silent gasp.

Two more arrived as he looked on.

A mechanical man who stood at the back and a small, dark-haired boy who came to the front.

The boy was older and wiser than he seemed, he approached with caution and stood some distance from Danny.

"Daniel? Daniel Fenton."

The crowd seemed to be holding its collective breath, traffic had ceased and cars waited, their idle engines humming softly under the street light which popped on one by one.

Danny sighed and all of the fight seemed to leave him.

"You can just call me Danny."

Then all his strength faded away and he collasped and lay spread eagle on the road. He stared up at the stares. His hair turned white had grown too long and obscured his eyes, but he stared as the sky went dark and caught the first few stares before the street lights washed them out.

But there was something wrong with him, because the stars were falling and it was loud. There was thumping sound in the night sky that was growing louder and louder into a thundering, pounding roar.

The stars grew brighter and brighter until they became the landing beacons of a helicopter accompanied by a spotlight and the thumping was its rotor blades as they sliced through the air. The helicopter landed as sirens wailed in the distance. The security forces hot on the tail of whoever was so bold as to land a helicopter on city streets.

A figure stepped from the cap of the helicopter and stood silhouetted against the brilliant beams of light. The figure stood tall and stiff the outline of a suit buffeted by the wind and long hair pulled tightly back whipped erratically in the rotor wash.

Danny scrambled to his feet. His eyes grew wide and both fear and anger flooded his chest, he felt the panic rising, and the pain.

The figure stepped forward from the light and his features grew clear. A sad old man with snow white hair, ever so carefully put together, neatly trimmed with a suit trimly pressed, but in his eyes he was falling apart.

The moment couldn't have been more cinematic, or more surreal.

Two men staring at one another in a darkening street. The buffeting wind of a helicopter behind one, and the gather crowd behind another. The street lights flicker on one at a time. A car sits forgotten just down the road, its door flung open and the driver on his knees. A pack of superheroes stands aside, usurped of their stage as two man stare at one another under the lamp light.

They are opposing in every way and yet so much the same. One is a boy barely even a man whilst the other stands on the stoop of the fading years of his life. The boy is disheveled and broken and lost, and in every way an outcast at first glance. The old man… is the same.

Though his clothes and his hair do not show it, his station does not warrant it. Vlad Masters is every bit the outcast and Danny made himself to be. And only in the eyes could one see they were the same.

The overcast gaze of one who is lost.

Danny had been plunged into loneliness with the suddenness of loss and finality of death. Vlad's loneliness had simply gone from relative to absolute.

Both were taking their toll.

Danny was horror struck, his knees began to shaken, his entire body trembling with fear. His eyes searched frantically for a way out, an escape route, of any kind. There was nothing but shops, all closed up or else the owners were part of the crowd steadily growing larger and closing him in.

There was one, an alleyway just beyond the chopper whose blades were beginning to slow and the engine to die with a whine.

But it meant getting past _him_…

His eyes hovered on Vlad Masters who to him was like a demon herald reaching from the underworld to undo everything he had done to save the world from himself. To drag him back to the depths of hell and become the monsters that put so many souls there.

A voice skittered across the back of his mind, his body went numb and he shivered, he could feel the hands of the monster around his neck, then he realized his hands were around his neck and snatched away from his throat.

"Daniel?" Vlad took a step forward.

The instantaneous fear shot through Danny followed by a piercing flash of cold.

"STAY BACK!" he shouted his hands balled into threatening fists and frost poured from them in a glittering cascade.

Vlad put his hands up in gesture of peace and took two steps back.

"Daniel please, I'm just…"

"SHUT UP! You shouldn't be here!"

"Daniel I…"

"SHUT UP."

Ice exploded around his feet and the asphalt, contradicting with the cold, split is a sharp _crack_.

"You stupid fruit loop, you have no idea what you're doing, what could happen because you're here."

It was Vlad's turn to clench hands into fists, and the Titans from where they stood could see many things in his eyes. There was loneliness, and fear, panic, anger, frustration, even anguish, but above all, there was determination.

And with that determination Vlad stepped forward, taking purposeful strides towards Danny.

A wall of jagged ice blasted past him, just barely missing. Several of the crowd screamed and the more fearful skittered away back into the shops as the ice struck the helicopter, knocking out a landing strut and causing the entire vehicle to collapse onto one side, the pilot scrambled from cockpit and dashed into the crowd to join those who had chosen to continue watching from a much safer distance. Many looked to the Titans, waiting for some heroic undertaking or sudden attack from the teenage heroes, but Robin did nothing. Right now, they could only observe, or else undo everything they had done thus far.

Despite the mayhem, Vlad didn't stop until he stood directly in front of Danny, who, though he had grown in the last three years, was still shorter than the older man, if only by an inch or so.

"You don't think I don't know _exactly_ what you going through, do you think I wasn't terrified when I first discovered my abilities, terrified that I might lose control and hurt those I care about. I know exactly how you feel the only difference is that you have the opportunity… no… the luxury of knowing precisely what will happen if you do lose control. You know who will suffer, who already has suffered. I know who the ghost was that you fought three years ago when… when _it_ happened, but even though they're gone and _he_ is the one who caused it the future is not set stone, regardless of what that blue-faced, age hopping, clock-winder says otherwise."

Vlad took a deep breath and calmed himself. Danny was staring at the ground, his shaggy mop of white hair glittered with frost, there were tiny crystals gathering on Vlad suit. Slowly, hesitating for an instant, he put his hand on Danny's shoulder. Immediately his hand numbed and turned blue from the cold.

"Maddie and Jack were the most caring people this world has ever seen or will ever see again, you're sister Jasmin was a wealth of potential and intellect, your friends were beyond resourceful and true, and your teacher can't have held more value or wisdom. I am ashamed of the bitterness I held for so many years that I failed to see any of it. I'm here to make up for it now."

Danny was silent, he stood rooted to the spot, but Vlad could feel the warmth returning to his hand and his suit jacket dampened as the frost began to melt. Then without warning Vlad pulled Danny into a hug as though he were just a child again and for likely the first time in three years, Danny felt the first vestiges of warmth coming back to him.


	12. Chapter 12

**AN: I'm so sorry for the long wait, my health issues returned with a vengeance, or rather decided to just get worse for no explicable reason. On top of the fact my writers block has been awful. This will be the final chapter I wish I could have made it longer but i only had and hour to work on it. I hope you like the ending I wrote part of it sometime ago and was proud of how it turned out. Thank you to everyone who stuck with me through this story and for all of the kind reviews, favorites, and followers, this is the first story I've written that has every been so successful so thank you.**

**You're Not Alone Anymore**

Warmth.

Yes there was warmth, but something wasn't right, something was far from right.

In fact it was very, very wrong.

Warmth became burning, and suddenly Danny's head felt as if it were on fire. His brain was screaming, his conscious was crying out.

Except that it wasn't his.

_HAHAHAHAHA! Go on boy, it's all right there on a silver platter, literally. All that power and all you have to do is reach into his chest and rip it out. _

Danny's eyes grew wide with horror; an instant latter Vlad found himself rocketing backwards with the blunt force of an ectoplasmic shockwave, his back hit the icy street and he slid until his head and body crashed painfully into the already collapsed helicopter. He made to stand "Daniel please I…"

"NO! Just Stay AWAY!"

The horrendous wail that erupted from the ghost boy shattered the windows of the buildings for two blocks in either direction. The Titans could nothing to shield the crowd from the massive sound wave, but the bystanders seemed smart enough on their own to know when it time to go. The blast ripped through the crowd and the entire street emptied as the people fled from Danny in a mass exodus of fear.

The Teen Titans, mean while, hit the deck all with the exception of Starfire, who was in flight, was pinned to a building ten feet off the ground.

Robin, flat on his stomach on the asphalt clinging to the street with a birdarang stabbed into the concrete, was thinking hard and fast, Fenton was losing control again, but this was completely different ability, the only real defense they had against sonic attacks was Cyborg's sonic cannon. He looked to his left, Raven had Beast Boy strapped down with her magic and beyond them Cybord was literally anchored to the ground by nothing more than his metal fingers.

In front of him the helicopter began to shift and metal shrieked against the blacktop, barely audible over the deafening wail, as the entire structure was starting to give way with Masters flattened to the flight carriage. Robin pulled another birdarang from his utility belt and just as he was going to shout to Cyborg, the assault on his body and ears died out with a strangled whimper.

Robin stumbled to his feet, his ears ringing and the world muffled, he spotted Danny on his knees clutching his throat, and instant later an orange and purple blur with streaks of green plowed into the white haired boy, and Starfire had him pinned on his back.

"You will be calm now please." She demanded, breathless from the ordeal, she looked at Robin and her eyes were desperate for a resolution, Masters had failed, maybe it was their turn?

He glanced at the millionaire who was slumped against the wrecked copter, his suit torn and hair disarrayed. The look of defeated resignation in the eyes of old man was enough, before Vlad Masters passed out there in the street.

The rest of the Titans approached Danny as Starfire helped him to his feet, satisfied that he was lucid enough for her to do so. The wail of ambulance and police sirens was finally rising in the distance.

Robin planted himself in front of Fenton and despite the Minnesota boy being several inches taller than he, managed to loom over him with a strong of a sense of authority as the masked boy could give.

"Looked Danny we're here to help you, but you have to tell us what you need, otherwise the only thing we can offer you is that." Robin gestured in the direction of the sirens, flashing blue and red lights were visible just down the street.

Danny was shaking, in a flash of light he was the quiet, black-haired boy again and he seemed smaller and younger than ever and his voice waivered as he spoke.

"Just keep me away from him." He glanced fearfully a Masters "for everyone's sake keep my away from _him._"

Robin nodded "Alright, we'll take you back to Titans Tower where we can help you, you can fill us in on your story, or as much of it as you want to on the way."

"Damn it!" Danny screamed as he pounded the counter with his fist. The tears of frustration, and fear, and loss were burning down his cheeks he ran his hands through his messy black hair.

"I ca… I can't do it…" He choked "I can't stop myself, I'm going to become _him_." He chest felt icy and hallow, his heart was ripping itself apart.

"I can't change my future, not without them, not with them gone."

He was breaking.

Finally, he was breaking apart. Vlad Masters was closing in on him. One day Plasmius would finally catch up, and…

What would he do then?

He wouldn't be able to stop himself, he would do it, he'd try to fight the darkness and…

Like every time before…

He would fail.

Fail, and then the whole world would burn…

Robin, Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, and Beast Boy.

The Teen Titians gazed at the young man, barely older than most of them, and yet so much older then he should ever be. His back was to them, leaning heavily on their kitchen counter. His entire body shook, racked with hopelessness. The weight of the future weighing on his shoulders, heavier than any object a child could hold, heavier than any responsibility a man could bear.

Heavier…

Heavier than any globe the gods held aloft.

Heavier than the weight of the world was the weight of its future.

That's what Danny held, and it had brought him to his knees, and shredded his flesh with the shattered glass of his soul.

"He was right; it's just a matter of time…"

"No."

Danny turned. Raven lowered her hood and locked eyes with the half-ghost boy.

"There's still hope." She said softly but when the darkness wouldn't leave his eyes, she took a deep breath and spoke again.

"It was foretold that I would become a portal, a portal that would allow the greatest evil in the universe, my father, to destroy the entire world." Her gazed shifted to her upturned palms, remembering the fiery red seals that had burned themselves into her skin on that horrid day.

She went on.

"I was told my entire life that I was destined to destroy the world, but when that day came, and I became the portal, my friends didn't give up on me, my _friends_ helped me save the world." Her gaze returned to Danny, and her eyes conveyed a passion seldom seen in her dark features.

"The future isn't set in stone."

His fists clenched, the pain and the frustration were welling up again.

"Well what am I supposed to do?!" he demanded.

"My friends are dead, my family, even my teacher, are dead! Because of me!" He was shouting now.

"Saving them would have prevented ALL of this from happening, saving them would have saved me from… from him, but I couldn't…" he choked on his words.

He took a deep breath, calming himself. There was a soft flash of light; Danny raised his hand, gloved in white.

"I failed… all of my friends are dead. They can't change my fate anymore…"

Starfire's bottom lip trembled and there were tears in her eyes

"Oh no that is not true!" she burst out and bolted forward, sweeping the ruined boy into a crushing embrace.

Danny wheezed as all of wind was squeezed from his lungs. She didn't let go of him again until black spots began to spark across his vision. As the vice came undone he coughed.

"What do you mean?"

Then a hand appeared on his shoulder, he looked to the owner.

It was Robin, the masked boy smiled.

"What she means…" he began, and a steel gauntlet appeared on Danny's opposite shoulder, he looked up to Cyborg.

"Is we're your friends now."

All small green dog yipped at his feet then morphed into Beast Boy who held out his hand with a toothy smile.

"Yeah, you don't have to fight alone."

Danny stared at the smiling faces, the hopeful eyes, the offered hand.

It took three years.

Three years for him to finally fall apart.

It took them three minutes to put him back together.

Together…

The tears came again, but this time…

This time it wasn't the pain or the loss that made them fall. This time, it was sheer joy.

He took Beast Boy's hand.

_"I'm not alone anymore."_

The Ghost Zone.

The alternate dimension of the human realm in which all who die dwell. It green mists, floating continents, and eerie depths swirled, and had been dark of late.

No longer did the icy wind that herald safety, blow across the endless emerald space. A guardian was missing, a protector.

The ghosts, the poltergeists, the phantoms, the lonesome souls had wandered in search of him.

But the door was locked.

Eventually the years passed and the Ghost Zone grew accustom to its dead air.

Then the wind blew, and the heads came up.

Hope and joy came billowing through the solid steel doors, and they swept gently across the departed plains. A chilling breeze, like the breath of winter morn.

The ghosts felt the cold returning to their ectoplasmic bones and shivered in content.

But at the entrance, at the portal, six phantoms gathered.

She placed her hand on the door; it was solid to her touch.

She was a part of this world just as much as the door that sealed her here. Five more hands joined her own, pressing their palms against the heavy door.

The steel pulsed as if alive. The joy that flowed with each pulse seemed to wash over them, making them feel, for just a moment, making them feel human.

She smiled.

"You know, when we first had to go away. I was worried…"

She took her hand away.

"But now I know… he's ok."

And one by one they'd drifted away. Fading gently into wisps of mist, a soft icy blue…

~The End~


End file.
